Page:Romain Rolland Handel.djvu/50

42 of Hanover, Ernest Augustus, and the Duke of Manchester, the English Ambassador Extraordinary at Venice, were both passionate music-lovers, and interested themselves in Handel. The first invitations which Handel received to go to Hanover, and to London, dated doubtless from that time.

But if the visit to Venice was not fruitless to the future of Handel, it brought him very little at the time. Handel could produce nothing at any of the seven opera houses. He was much happier at Rome, where he returned at the beginning of March, 1708. The renown of his Roderigo had preceded him. All the Italian merchants strove to receive him with honour. He was the guest of the Marquis Ruspoli, whose gardens on the Esquilino formed the bond of reunion for the Academy of the Arcadians. Handel found himself agreeably placed amongst the most illustrious men which Italy boasted in literature, the arts, and in the aristocracy. Arcadia, which united the nobility and the artists, in a spiritual brotherhood, counted amongst its members,