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

344 of Signor Girolamo Laurenti, which happened on Christmas Day. I did not answer you because I was hoping to send my reply together with forty pounds of chocolate, which I had been preparing from the first days of January. But, to my regret, I must tell you that I have not yet found the suitable way of sending it to you, as via Venice it is absolutely impossible, if not by spending as much in duty as more than half of what the chocolate is worth. Therefore I must wait for some particular circumstance, and this (regardless of how diligent I have been) has hitherto not happened to me. In this case (with the true trust which must exist between us) Your Reverence must help me, and contribute with me to facilitate the shipping, by giving me notice if by luck some person from Bologna (reliable, and a friend of yours) were to come here, or by giving me some other enlightenment and indication to that effect. Meanwhile, I shall continue with my diligence here, but I have too much urgency for this conveyance to reach you as soon as possible, so I am most troubled with regard to this detail. So you help me on your side, while I help myself on mine. I thank you for the news you gave me of Laurenti’s death, 51 for although I am greatly pained by the loss of a man who brought the greatest honour and excellent reputation to our trade, and who was a good patron of mine, nonetheless, as God has wanted him, I appreciate receiving the news thereof, in order to pray to God for him, and to have others, who are better than me, pray for him. Then, with regard to my interest, which consists in the examination, Your Reverence can imagine that I have wanted it to be completed for a long time, and I consequently cannot deny my greatest impatience. Nonetheless, I shall adapt to my duty, which consists in not burdening two busy people more than is necessary, but I merely renew with ever greater urgency my prayers to finally reach the conclusion. I know full well, I have foreseen it, that before we can decide entirely (that would be too much) we shall have to meet and solve many and great difficulties. But my mortification consists in the fact that hitherto not even one of those which I call true difficulties has been proposed. Nonetheless, my consolation (always firm and founded) is to have placed this serious matter in the hands of such two persons that, had I wanted to mould them in my own way, I wouldn’t have been capable of moulding them to suit the present need. This is my consolation, a truly great one, and by the grace of it I patiently wait. I convey my regards to you, as I do to the Most Illustrious Signor Dottor Balbi; and I remain as ever Your Reverence’s most humble, devoted and obliged servant Giuseppe Tartini Padua, 4 February 1752 51 The composer and violinist Girolamo Nicolò Laurenti (1678-1751) was a violinist in San Petronio in Bologna, where he substituted his father. Perti entrusted him with the task of managing the orchestra of San Petronio in 1734. M. Talbot and E. Careri, “Laurenti”, Ng, vol. 14.