Four Comedies

Excerpt from Four Comedies
GENTLE READER,
During the last year of the war I had among my colleagues, in a certain mysterious department, a "gallant Major who was devoted to Virgil and Catullus. Often, when we were on night duty, we took our hasty lunch in a special cafe at two or three in the morning; and I shall always remember with admiration how zealously, even at those hours and by those darkened lights, he construed Catullus for my benefit while the yawning waitress was ordering our poached eggs.
That will show you the man he was, make you realize how gladly, when the war was over, I accepted his invitation to dinner, and perhaps enable you to share my subsequent astonishment. For after dinner the Major lit his cigar and said, 'Now tell me what you've been writing since the Armistice broke up our Happy Family?'
'As a matter of fact, ' I answered, ' I have just translated a delightful comedy by Goldoni.'
'Ah, ' said the Major, 'and when shall we see it acted?' 'Ah, ' said I - 'when!'
The Major meditated for a moment. Then, looking up blandly, he asked ' Who is Goldoni? A Japanese?'
You, Gentle Reader, may well know more than I about Goldoni; but lest, like the Major, you have found such pleasure in Virgil and Catullus that (until you bought this book - for I trust you not to have borrowed it) you had never been curious to learn something of our modern upstart authors, I hasten to declare that Carlo Goldoni was no Japanese; that he was, in fact, a Venetian, and that he lived from 1707 to 1793. If, when you have read these comedies, you desire to shake hands with him, buy the two volumes of his 'Memoires.'
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