Though it would appear that on leaving Ferrara in this irregular manner he went in the first instance to Florence, it seems that he had had hopes given him of a comfortable position and honourable provision at Turin. He was to have been made a Counsellor of State, and entrusted with the task of remodelling the course of study at the university, with a stipend of six hundred crowns annually. But on arriving at Turin he found difficulties in the way. In fact, the angry Duke of Ferrara had used his influence with the Duke of Savoy to prevent anything being done for his contumacious Secretary of State. Guarini, extremely mortified, had to leave Turin, and betook himself to Venice. His adventure, however, was of a nature to cause great scandal in that clime and time. As usual, the Italians were offended at the "imprudence" of which Guarini's temper had led him to be guilty, more than they would have been by many a fault which among ourselves would be deemed a very much worse one. A violence of temper or indignation shown in such a manner as to injure _one's own_ interests is, and in a yet greater degree was, a spectacle extremely disgusting to Italian moral sentiment. The outcry against Guarini on this occasion was so great that he found himself obliged to put forth an exculpatory statement. "If human actions, my most kind readers," he begins, "always bore marked on the front of them the aims and motives which have produced them, or if those who talk about them were always well informed enough to be able to judge of them without injury to the persons of whom they speak, I should not be compelled, at my age, and after so many years of a life led in the eyes of the world, and often busied in defending the honour of others, to defend this day my own, which has always been dearer to me than my life. Having heard, then, that my having left the service of His Serene Highness the Duke of Ferrara and entered that of the Duke of Savoy has given occasion to some persons, ignorant probably of the real state of the case, to make various remarks, and form various opinions, I have determined to publish the truth, and at the same time to declare my own sentiments in the matter.