Of Livy, no news; were he alive, I would gladly, like the inhabitant of Gades, make the journey to Rome expressly to see him; I would gladly, like Panormita[228], have sold my field to buy a few fragments of the History of Rome, or, like Henry IV., promised a province for a "Decade[229]." A mercer of Saumur did not go so far: having purchased a manuscript of Livy's, by way of old papers, from the apothecary of the convent of the Abbey of Fontevrault, he used it quite simply to make drums for battledores. [Sidenote: Pellico's "Zanze."] When I returned to the Stella d'Oro, Hyacinthe was back from Venice. I had charged him to call on Zanze to make my excuses for having gone away without seeing her. He found the mother and daughter in a great state of anger; she had just been reading _Mie Prigioni._ The mother said that Silvio was a "villain:" he had allowed himself to write that Brollo had pulled him, Pellico, by his leg when he, Pellico, had climbed up on a table. The daughter exclaimed: "Pellico is a slanderer, and an ungrateful one to boot. After the services which I have done him, he now tries to dishonour me." She threatened to have the work seized and to sue the author in the law-courts; she had begun to write a refutation of the book: Zanze is not only an artist, but a woman of letters. Hyacinthe asked her to give me the unfinished refutation; she hesitated and then handed him the manuscript: she was pale and tired from her labours. The old gaoler's wife still claimed to sell her daughter's embroidery and mosaic work. If ever I go back to Venice, I will discharge my debt better to Madame Brollo than I did to Abou Gosch, the chief of the Arabs in the mountains of Jerusalem: I had promised him a bale of rice from Damietta and I never sent it. Here is Zanze's commentary: "La Veneziana maravigliandosi che contro di essa vi sieno persona che abbia avutto ardire di scrivere pezze di un romanzo formatto ed empitto di impie falsità, si lagna fortemente contro l'auttore mentre potteva servirsi di altra persona onde dar sfogo al suo talento, ma non prendersi spasso di una giovine onesta di educazione e religione, e questa stimatta ed amatta e conosciutta a fondo da tutti.