Alfieri felt proud and happy when he had completed his fourteen tragedies. "That month of October," he writes, "was memorable to me, since I enjoyed a repose no less delicious than necessary, after so much labour: full to the brim of vainglory, I breathed no word of my achievements to any but myself, and, with a sort of veiled moderation, to her I loved; who, through her affection for me, probably, seemed well inclined to believe that I was capable of being a great man, and always encouraged me to do all I could to become one." His works, also, were becoming known. A few of the nobility of Rome formed themselves into a company, and acted his "Antigone," in which he took the part of Creon: the representation was crowned with success. He was, besides, in the habit of reading his tragedies in society, partly for the sake of the mute criticism displayed by the attention and interest they excited in his audience; and, under the superintendence of his friend Gori, four among his dramas were printed at Siena.
But this very celebrity was the cause of the disaster that hung over his head, and, by drawing attention to him, engendered enmity and disturbance. His familiar intercourse with the countess, and the daily habit of his life, in forming a part of the society she gathered around her, began to excite censure: this roused at once his fears and indignation. His mode of life was in strict accordance with the notions of propriety, as they rule manners in Italy. Injurious and to be deprecated as the system of society is, no individual thinks, when he follows the example of the whole of his countrymen, that he should be selected as an object for blame. However, in a moral and religious view, the so-named friendship of the countess and Alfieri was blameable, yet they scrupulously attended to the rules of decorum, which form the whole of an Italian's conscience, generally speaking, and believed that they had every right to be happy in each other. As we have said in another place, we are not inclined to bestow vehement blame on individual conduct, resulting from a system of manners which has endured for ages, while that system itself merits the utmost abhorrence, and, we are happy to be able to say, is in progress of being extirpated in Italy: until it is, there can be no hope of moral regeneration, or for the happiness and improvement of its inhabitants.