the memories of casanova 145

the memories of casanova 145

It is probable that just as my overwhelmed soul gave signs of its

failing strength by the loss of the thinking faculty, so my body

distilled a great part of those fluids which by their continual

circulation set the thinking faculty in motion. Thus a sudden shock

might cause instantaneous death, and send one to Paradise by a cut much

too short.

 

In course of time the captain of the men-at-arms came to tell me that he

was under orders to take me under the Leads. Without a word I followed

him. We went by gondola, and after a thousand turnings among the small

canals we got into the Grand Canal, and landed at the prison quay. After

climbing several flights of stairs we crossed a closed bridge which

forms the communication between the prisons and the Doge's palace,

crossing the canal called Rio di Palazzo. On the other side of this

bridge there is a gallery which we traversed. We then crossed one room,

and entered another, where sat an individual in the dress of a noble,

who, after looking fixedly at me, said, "E quello, mettetelo in

deposito:"

 

This man was the secretary of the Inquisitors, the prudent Dominic

Cavalli, who was apparently ashamed to speak Venetian in my presence as

he pronounced my doom in the Tuscan language.

 

Messer-Grande then made me over to the warden of The Leads, who stood by

with an enormous bunch of keys, and accompanied by two guards, made me

climb two short flights of stairs, at the top of which followed a

passage and then another gallery, at the end of which he opened a door,

and I found myself in a dirty garret, thirty-six feet long by twelve

broad, badly lighted by a window high up in the roof. I thought this

garret was my prison, but I was mistaken; for, taking an enormous key,

the gaoler opened a thick door lined with iron, three and a half feet

high, with a round hole in the middle, eight inches in diameter, just as

I was looking intently at an iron machine. This machine was like a horse

shoe, an inch thick and about five inches across from one end to the

other. I was thinking what could be the use to which this horrible

instrument was put, when the gaoler said, with a smile,

 

"I see, sir, that you wish to know what that is for, and as it happens I

can satisfy your curiosity. When their excellencies give orders that

anyone is to be strangled, he is made to sit down on a stool, the back

turned to this collar, and his head is so placed that the collar goes

round one half of the neck. A silk band, which goes round the other

half, passes through this hole, and the two ends are connected with the

axle of a wheel which is turned by someone until the prisoner gives up

the ghost, for the confessor, God be thanked! never leaves him till he

is dead."

 

"All this sounds very ingenious, and I should think that it is you who

have the honour of turning the wheel."

 

He made no answer, and signing to me to enter, which I did by bending

double, he shut me up, and afterwards asked me through the grated hole

what I would like to eat.

 

"I haven't thought anything about it yet," I answered. And he went away,

locking all the doors carefully behind him.

 

Stunned with grief, I leant my elbows on the top of the grating. It was

crossed, by six iron bars an inch thick, which formed sixteen square

holes. This opening would have lighted my cell, if a square beam

supporting the roof which joined the wall below the window had not

intercepted what little light came into that horrid garret. After making

the tour of my sad abode, my head lowered, as the cell was not more than

five and a half feet high, I found by groping along that it formed

three-quarters of a square of twelve feet. The fourth quarter was a kind

of recess, which would have held a bed; but there was neither bed, nor

table, nor chair, nor any furniture whatever, except a bucket--the use

of which may be guessed, and a bench fixed in the wall a foot wide and

four feet from the ground. On it I placed my cloak, my fine suit, and my

hat trimmed with Spanish paint and adorned with a beautiful white

feather. The heat was great, and my instinct made me go mechanically to

the grating, the only place where I could lean on my elbows. I could not

see the window, but I saw the light in the garret, and rats of a fearful

size, which walked unconcernedly about it; these horrible creatures

coming close under my grating without shewing the slightest fear. At the

sight of these I hastened to close up the round hole in the middle of

the door with an inside shutter, for a visit from one of the rats would

have frozen my blood. I passed eight hours in silence and without

stirring, my arms all the time crossed on the top of the grating.

 

At last the clock roused me from my reverie, and I began to feel

restless that no one came to give me anything to eat or to bring me a

bed whereon to sleep. I thought they might at least let me have a chair

and some bread and water. I had no appetite, certainly; but were my

gaolers to guess as much? And never in my life had I been so thirsty. I

was quite sure, however, that somebody would come before the close of

the day; but when I heard eight o'clock strike I became furious,

knocking at the door, stamping my feet, fretting and fuming, and

accompanying this useless hubbub with loud cries. After more than an

hour of this wild exercise, seeing no one, without the slightest reason

to think I could be heard, and shrouded in darkness, I shut the grating

for fear of the rats, and threw myself at full length upon the floor. So

cruel a desertion seemed to me unnatural, and I came to the conclusion

that the Inquisitors had sworn my death. My investigation as to what I

had done to deserve such a fate was not a long one, for in the most

scrupulous examination of my conduct I could find no crimes. I was, it

is true, a profligate, a gambler, a bold talker, a man who thought of

little besides enjoying this present life, but in all that there was no

offence against the state. Nevertheless, finding myself treated as a

criminal, rage and despair made me express myself against the horrible

despotism which oppressed me in a manner which I will leave my readers

to guess, but which I will not repeat here. But notwithstanding my brief

and anxiety, the hunger which began to make itself felt, and the thirst

which tormented me, and the hardness of the boards on which I lay, did

not prevent exhausted nature from reasserting her rights; I fell asleep.

 

My strong constitution was in need of sleep; and in a young and healthy

subject this imperious necessity silences all others, and in this way

above all is sleep rightly termed the benefactor of man.

 

The clock striking midnight awoke me. How sad is the awaking when it

makes one regret one's empty dreams. I could scarcely believe that I had

spent three painless hours. As I lay on my left side, I stretched out my

right hand to get my handkerchief, which I remembered putting on that

side. I felt about for it, when--heavens! what was my surprise to feel

another hand as cold as ice. The fright sent an electric shock through

me, and my hair began to stand on end.

 

Never had I been so alarmed, nor should I have previously thought myself

capable of experiencing such terror. I passed three or four minutes in a

kind of swoon, not only motionless but incapable of thinking. As I got

back my senses by degrees, I tried to make myself believe that the hand

I fancied I had touched was a mere creature of my disordered

imagination; and with this idea I stretched out my hand again, and again

with the same result. Benumbed with fright, I uttered a piercing cry,

and, dropping the hand I held, I drew back my arm, trembling all over:

 

Soon, as I got a little calmer and more capable of reasoning, I

concluded that a corpse had been placed beside me whilst I slept, for I

was certain it was not there when I lay down.

 

"This," said I, "is the body of some strangled wretch, and they would

thus warn me of the fate which is in store for me."

 

The thought maddened me; and my fear giving place to rage, for the third

time I stretched my arm towards the icy hand, seizing it to make certain

of the fact in all its atrocity, and wishing to get up, I rose upon my

left elbow, and found that I had got hold of my other hand. Deadened by

the weight of my body and the hardness of the boards, it had lost

warmth, motion, and all sensation.

 

In spite of the humorous features in this incident, it did not cheer me

up, but, on the contrary, inspired me with the darkest fancies. I saw

that I was in a place where, if the false appeared true, the truth might

appear false, where understanding was bereaved of half its prerogatives,

where the imagination becoming affected would either make the reason a

victim to empty hopes or to dark despair. I resolved to be on my guard;

and for the first time in my life, at the age of thirty, I called

philosophy to my assistance. I had within me all the seeds of

philosophy, but so far I had had no need for it.

 

I am convinced that most men die without ever having thought, in the

proper sense of the word, not so much for want of wit or of good sense,

but rather because the shock necessary to the reasoning faculty in its

inception has never occurred to them to lift them out of their daily

habits.

 

After what I had experienced, I could think of sleep no more, and to get

up would have been useless as I could not stand upright, so I took the

only sensible course and remained seated. I sat thus till four o'clock

in the morning, the sun would rise at five, and I longed to see the day,

for a presentiment which I held infallible told me that it would set me

again at liberty. I was consumed with a desire for revenge, nor did I

conceal it from myself. I saw myself at the head of the people, about to

exterminate the Government which had oppressed me; I massacred all the

aristocrats without pity; all must be shattered and brought to the dust.

I was delirious; I knew the authors of my misfortune, and in my fancy I

destroyed them. I restored the natural right common to all men of being

obedient only to the law, and of being tried only by their peers and by

laws to which they have agreed-in short, I built castles in Spain. Such

is man when he has become the prey of a devouring passion. He does not

suspect that the principle which moves him is not reason but wrath, its

greatest enemy.

 

I waited for a less time than I had expected, and thus I became a little

more quiet. At half-past four the deadly silence of the place--this hell

of the living--was broken by the shriek of bolts being shot back in the

passages leading to my cell.

 

"Have you had time yet to think about what you will take to eat?" said

the harsh voice of my gaoler from the wicket.

 

One is lucky when the insolence of a wretch like this only shews itself

in the guise of jesting. I answered that I should like some rice soup, a

piece of boiled beef, a roast, bread, wine, and water. I saw that the

lout was astonished not to hear the lamentations he expected. He went

away and came back again in a quarter of an hour to say that he was

astonished I did not require a bed and the necessary pieces of

furniture, "for" said he, "if you flatter yourself that you are only

here for a night, you are very much mistaken."

 

"Then bring me whatever you think necessary."

 

"Where shall I go for it? Here is a pencil and paper; write it down."

 

I skewed him by writing where to go for my shirts, stockings, and

clothes of all sorts, a bed, table, chair, the books which Messer-Grande

had confiscated, paper, pens, and so forth. On my reading out the list

to him (the lout did not know how to read) he cried, "Scratch out," said

he, "scratch out books, paper, pens, looking-glass and razors, for all

that is forbidden fruit here, and then give me some money to get your

dinner." I had three sequins so I gave him one, and he went off. He

spent an hour in the passages engaged, as I learnt afterwards, in

attending on seven other prisoners who were imprisoned in cells placed

far apart from each other to prevent all communication.

 

About noon the gaoler reappeared followed by five guards, whose duty it

was to serve the state prisoners. He opened: the cell door to bring in

my dinner and the furniture I had asked for. The bed was placed in the

recess; my dinner was laid out on a small table, and I had to eat with

an ivory spoon he had procured out of the money I had given him; all forks, knives, and edged tools being forbidden.