Giuseppe Tartini - Lettere e documenti / Pisma in dokumenti / Letters and Documents - Volume / Knjiga / Volume II

442 with you in your completely restored health: I am assured of this by my dear Cabati, who has brought and delivered to me this last letter written by Your Reverence, whom I entreat and implore to carefully measure your efforts so that you will be able to complete them for the glory of God. I have had the said book in my hands for many weeks: a famous piece of antiquity indeed; but with the requirement of having to send it there to Your Reverence in such a manner as not to endanger the book in any way, with regard to both loss and damage; and with the necessary condition of it being returned after Your Reverence has used it. There is no point in hoping to have it at any price, however exorbitant, and there is no need for me to say this. I ask Your Reverence now to consider and command how I must serve you in this matter. I now come to your work, which by this time I have read and re-read more than once. Once I am free from what at presently occupies me entirely (and it will be soon) I shall write to you my impressions with regard to two points alone in the whole work, and I shall write with that freedom and Christian sincerity which must exist and must be maintained between the two of us on this Earth until the Blessed God bestows upon us the mercy of leading us to the true freedom of paradise. One of the points concerns history; the other one music. Both the one and the other are essential. Your Reverence will see what good or bad there is in it, and will make a choice and make use of it at your leisure. I am persuaded that for now you have no need of my portrait. I confirm what I wrote to you, and I entreat you again not to make any use whatsoever of what was sent to you with an anonymous letter. 96 I shall make up for this too as soon as possible: may you be assured of this, and if by any chance I am mistaken and Your Reverence wants it promptly, write as much to me in reply, so that I may take the right measures to serve you. I then have evidence that Signor Giovanni Gottlieb has ended up in Bologna and that he is at Your Reverence’s school of counterpoint. I strongly recommend him to you, although I know that for Your Reverence there is no need of this. But even though he is of another law and religion, I love him cordially for his excellent qualities, and I have for him the same care I would have for a child of my own. He has talent, and I am persuaded that he can succeed with distinction and may honour Your Reverence in particular. Signor Conte Algarotti recently passed by here and he gave me recent news of our Signor Cavaliere Broschi, I say “our” by which I mean our glory and our honour, both of this century and of the coming centuries. When Your Reverence is with him, please submit to him my most reverent and most cordial regards, and tell him that among the very few wishes that still remain in my soul and in my heart, one is to see him again and to kiss his hands before my death. May Your Reverence then remember to commend me to God in your holy services, as on my part I do so unworthily every day for Your Reverence, whose hands I heartily kiss, and to whom I bow down and remain, as ever, 96 In Italian lettera cieca , literally a ‘blind letter’.