the memories of casanova 143

the memories of casanova 143

You will remember, dear reader, about a romance by the Abbe Chiari, a

satirical romance which Mr. Murray had given me, and in which I fared

badly enough at the author's hands I had small reason to be pleased with

him, and I let him know my opinion in such wise that the abbe who

dreaded a caning, kept upon his guard. About the same time I received an

anonymous letter, the writer of which told me that I should be better

occupied in taking care of myself than in thoughts of chastising the

abbe, for I was threatened by an imminent danger. Anonymous letter-

writers should be held in contempt, but one ought to know how, on

occasion, to make the best of advice given in that way. I did nothing,

and made a great mistake.

 

About the same time a man named Manuzzi, a stone setter for his first

trade, and also a spy, a vile agent of the State Inquisitors--a man of

whom I knew nothing--found a way to make my acquaintance by offering to

let me have diamonds on credit, and by this means he got the entry of my

house. As he was looking at some books scattered here and there about

the room, he stopped short at the manuscripts which were on magic.

Enjoying foolishly enough, his look of astonishment, I shewed him the

books which teach one how to summon the elementary spirits. My readers

will, I hope, do me the favour to believe that I put no faith in these

conjuring books, but I had them by me and used to amuse myself with them

as one does amuse one's self with the multitudinous follies which

proceed from the heads of visionaries. A few days after, the traitor

came to see me and told me that a collector, whose name he might not

tell me, was ready to give me a thousand sequins for my five books, but

that he would like to examine them first to see if they were genuine. As

he promised to let me have them back in twenty-four hours, and not

thinking much about the matter, I let him have them. He did not fail to

bring them back the next day, telling me that the collector thought them

forgeries. I found out, some years after, that he had taken them to the

State Inquisitors, who thus discovered that I was a notable magician.

 

Everything that happened throughout this fatal month tended to my ruin,

for Madame Memmo, mother of Andre, Bernard, and Laurent Memmo, had taken

it into her head that I had inclined her sons to atheistic opinions, and

took counsel with the old knight Antony Mocenigo, M. de Bragadin's

uncle, who was angry with me, because, as he said, I had conspired to

seduce his nephew. The matter was a serious one, and an auto-da-fe was

very possible, as it came under the jurisdiction of the Holy Office--a

kind of wild beast, with which it is not good to quarrel. Nevertheless,

as there would be some difficulty in shutting me up in the

ecclesiastical prisons of the Holy Office, it was determined to carry my

case before the State Inquisitors, who took upon themselves the

provisional duty of putting a watch upon my manner of living.

 

M. Antony Condulmer, who as a friend of Abbe Chiari's was an enemy of

mine, was then an Inquisitor of State, and he took the opportunity of

looking upon me in the light of a disturber of the peace of the

commonwealth. A secretary of an embassy, whom I knew some years after,

told me that a paid informer, with two other witnesses, also, doubtless,

in the pay of this grand tribunal, had declared that I was guilty of

only believing in the devil, as if this absurd belief, if it were

possible, did not necessarily connote a belief in God! These three

honest fellows testified with an oath that when I lost money at play, on

which occasion all the faithful are wont to blaspheme, I was never heard

to curse the devil. I was further accused of eating meat all the year

round, of only going to hear fine masses, and I was vehemently suspected

of being a Freemason. It was added that I frequented the society of

foreign ministers, and that living as I did with three noblemen, it was

certain that I revealed, for the large sums which I was seen to lose, as

many state secrets as I could worm out of them.

 

All these accusations, none of which had any foundation in fact, served

the Tribunal as a pretext to treat me as an enemy of the commonwealth

and as a prime conspirator. For several weeks I was counselled by

persons whom I might have trusted to go abroad whilst the Tribunal was

engaged on my case. This should have been enough, for the only people

who can live in peace at Venice are those whose existence the Tribunal

is ignorant of, but I obstinately despised all these hints. If I had

listened to the indirect advice which was given me, I should have become

anxious, and I was the sworn foe of all anxiety. I kept saying to

myself, "I feel remorse for nothing and I am therefore guilty of

nothing, and the innocent have nothing to fear." I was a fool, for I

argued as if I had been a free man in a free country. I must also

confess that what to a great extent kept me from thinking of possible

misfortune was the actual misfortune which oppressed me from morning to

night. I lost every day, I owed money everywhere, I had pawned all my

jewels, and even my portrait cases, taking the precaution, however, of

removing the portraits, which with my important papers and my amorous

letters I had placed in the hands of Madame Manzoni. I found myself

avoided in society. An old senator told me, one day, that it was known

that the young Countess Bonafede had become mad in consequence of the

love philtres I had given her. She was still at the asylum, and in her

moments of delirium she did nothing but utter my name with curses. I

must let my readers into the secret of this small history.

 

This young Countess Bonafede, to whom I had given some sequins a few

days after my return to Venice, thought herself capable of making me

continue my visits, from which she had profited largely. Worried by her

letters I went to see her several times, and always left her a few

sequins, but with the exception of my first visit I was never polite

enough to give her any proofs of my affection. My coldness had baulked

all her endeavours for a year, when she played a criminal part, of

which, though I was never able absolutely to convict her, I had every

reason to believe her guilty.

 

She wrote me a letter, in which she importuned me to come and see her at

a certain hour on important business.

 

My curiosity, as well as a desire to be of service to her, took me there

at the appointed time; but as soon as she saw me she flung her arms

round my neck, and told me that the important business was love. This

made me laugh heartily, and I was pleased to find her looking neater

than usual, which, doubtless, made me find her looking prettier. She

reminded me of St. Andre, and succeeded so well in her efforts that I

was on the point of satisfying her desires. I took off my cloak, and

asked her if her father were in. She told me he had gone out. Being

obliged to go out for a minute, in coming back I mistook the door, and I

found myself in the next room, where I was much astonished to see the

count and two villainous-looking fellows with him.

 

"My dear count," I said, "your daughter has just told me that you were

out."

 

"I myself told her to do so, as I have some business with these

gentlemen, which, however, can wait for another day."

 

I would have gone, but he stopped me, and having dismissed the two men

he told me that he was delighted to see me, and forthwith began the tale

of his troubles, which were of more than one kind. The State Inquisitors

had stopped his slender pension, and he was on the eve of seeing himself

driven out with his family into the streets to beg his bread. He said

that he had not been able to pay his landlord anything for three years,

but if he could pay only a quarter's rent, he would obtain a respite, or

if he persisted in turning him out, he could make a night-flitting of

it, and take up his abode somewhere else. As he only wanted twenty

ducats, I took out six sequins and gave them to him. He embraced me, and

shed tears of joy; then, taking his poor cloak, he called his daughter,

told her to keep me company, and went out.

 

Alone with the countess, I examined the door of communication between

the two rooms and found it slightly open.

 

"Your father," I said, "would have surprised me, and it is easy to guess

what he would have done with the two sbirri who were with him. The plot

is clear, and I have only escaped from it by the happiest of chances."

 

She denied, wept, called God to witness, threw herself on her knees; but

I turned my head away, and taking my cloak went away without a word. She

kept on writing to me, but her letters remained unanswered, and I saw

her no more.

 

It was summer-time, and between the heat, her passions, hunger, and

wretchedness, her head was turned, and she became so mad that she went

out of the house stark naked, and ran up and down St. Peter's Place,

asking those who stopped her to take her to my house. This sad story

went all over the town and caused me a great deal of annoyance. The poor

wretch was sent to an asylum, and did not recover her reason for five

years. When she came out she found herself reduced to beg her bread in

the streets, like all her brothers, except one, whom I found a cadet in

the guards of the King of Spain twelve years afterwards.

 

At the time of which I am speaking all this had happened a year ago, but

the story was dug up against me, and dressed out in the attire of

fiction, and thus formed part of those clouds which were to discharge

their thunder upon me to my destruction.

 

In the July of 1755 the hateful court gave Messer-Grande instructions to

secure me, alive or dead. In this furious style all orders for arrests

proceeding from the Three were issued, for the least of their commands

carried with it the penalty of death.

 

Three or four days before the Feast of St. James, my patron saint, M----

M---- made me a present of several ells of silver lace to trim a

sarcenet dress which I was going to wear on the eve of the feast. I went

to see her, dressed in my fine suit, and I told her that I should come

again on the day following to ask her to lend me some money, as I did

not know where to turn to find some. She was still in possession of the

five hundred sequins which she had put aside when I had sold her

diamonds.

 

As I was sure of getting the money in the morning I passed the night at

play, and I lost the five hundred sequins in advance. At day-break,

being in need of a little quiet, I went to the Erberia, a space of

ground on the quay of the Grand Canal. Here is held the herb, fruit, and

flower market.

 

People in good society who come to walk in the Erberia at a rather early

hour usually say that they come to see the hundreds of boats laden with

vegetables, fruit and flowers, which hail from the numerous islands near

the town; but everyone knows that they are men and women who have been

spending the night in the excesses of Venus or Bacchus, or who have lost

all hope at the gaming-table, and come here to breath a purer air and to

calm their minds. The fashion of walking in this place shews how the

character of a nation changes. The Venetians of old time who made as

great a mystery of love as of state affairs, have been replaced by the

modern Venetians, whose most prominent characteristic is to make a

mystery of nothing. Those who come to the Erberia with women wish to

excite the envy of their friends by thus publishing their good fortune.

Those who come alone are on the watch for discoveries, or on the look-

out for materials to make wives or husbands jealous, the women only come

to be seen, glad to let everybody know that they are without any

restraint upon their actions. There was certainly no question of

smartness there, considering the disordered style of dress worn. The

women seemed to have agreed to shew all the signs of disorder

imaginable, to give those who saw them something to talk about. As for

the men, on whose arms they leaned, their careless and lounging airs

were intended to give the idea of a surfeit of pleasure, and to make one

think that the disordered appearance of their companions was a sure

triumph they had enjoyed. In short it was the correct thing to look

tired out, and as if one stood in need of sleep.

 

This veracious description, reader, will not give you a very high

opinion of the morals of my dear fellow citizens; but what object should

I have at my age for deceiving? Venice is not at the world's end, but is

well enough known to those whose curiosity brings them into Italy; and

everyone can see for himself if my pictures are overdrawn.

 

After walking up and down for half an hour, I came away, and thinking

the whole house still a-bed I drew my key out to open the door, but what

was my astonishment to find it useless, as the door was open, and what

is more, the lock burst off. I ran upstairs, and found them all up, and

my landlady uttering bitter lamentations.

 

"Messer-Grande," she told me, "has entered my house forcibly,

accompanied by a band of sbirri. He turned everything upside down, on

the pretext that he was in search of a portmanteau full of salt--a

highly contraband article. He said he knew that a portmanteau had been

landed there the evening before, which was quite true; but it belonged

to Count S----, and only contained linen and clothes. Messer-Grande,

after inspecting it, went out without saying a word."