My Memoirs are not written for young persons who, in order to avoid
false steps and slippery roads, ought to spend their youth in blissful
ignorance, but for those who, having thorough experience of life, are no
longer exposed to temptation, and who, having but too often gone through
the fire, are like salamanders, and can be scorched by it no more. True
virtue is but a habit, and I have no hesitation in saying that the
really virtuous are those persons who can practice virtue without the
slightest trouble; such persons are always full of toleration, and it is
to them that my Memoirs are addressed.
I have written in French, and not in Italian, because the French
language is more universal than mine, and the purists, who may criticise
in my style some Italian turns will be quite right, but only in case it
should prevent them from understanding me clearly. The Greeks admired
Theophrastus in spite of his Eresian style, and the Romans delighted in
their Livy in spite of his Patavinity. Provided I amuse my readers, it
seems to me that I can claim the same indulgence. After all, every
Italian reads Algarotti with pleasure, although his works are full of
French idioms.
There is one thing worthy of notice: of all the living languages
belonging to the republic of letters, the French tongue is the only one
which has been condemned by its masters never to borrow in order to
become richer, whilst all other languages, although richer in words than
the French, plunder from it words and constructions of sentences,
whenever they find that by such robbery they add something to their own
beauty. Yet those who borrow the most from the French, are the most
forward in trumpeting the poverty of that language, very likely thinking
that such an accusation justifies their depredations. It is said that
the French language has attained the apogee of its beauty, and that the
smallest foreign loan would spoil it, but I make bold to assert that
this is prejudice, for, although it certainly is the most clear, the
most logical of all languages, it would be great temerity to affirm that
it can never go farther or higher than it has gone. We all recollect
that, in the days of Lulli, there was but one opinion of his music, yet
Rameau came and everything was changed. The new impulse given to the
French nation may open new and unexpected horizons, and new beauties,
fresh perfections, may spring up from new combinations and from new
wants.
The motto I have adopted justifies my digressions, and all the
commentaries, perhaps too numerous, in which I indulge upon my various
exploits: 'Nequidquam sapit qui sibi non sapit'. For the same reason I
have always felt a great desire to receive praise and applause from
polite society:
'Excitat auditor stadium, laudataque virtus Crescit, et immensum gloria
calcar habet.
I would willingly have displayed here the proud axiom: 'Nemo laeditur
nisi a se ipso', had I not feared to offend the immense number of
persons who, whenever anything goes wrong with them, are wont to
exclaim, "It is no fault of mine!" I cannot deprive them of that small
particle of comfort, for, were it not for it, they would soon feel
hatred for themselves, and self-hatred often leads to the fatal idea of
self-destruction.
As for myself I always willingly acknowledge my own self as the
principal cause of every good or of every evil which may befall me;
therefore I have always found myself capable of being my own pupil, and
ready to love my teacher.
THE MEMOIRS OF JACQUES CASANOVA
VENETIAN YEARS
EPISODE 1 -- CHILDHOOD
CHAPTER I
My Family Pedigree--My Childhood
Don Jacob Casanova, the illegitimate son of Don Francisco Casanova, was
a native of Saragosa, the capital of Aragon, and in the year of 1428 he
carried off Dona Anna Palofax from her convent, on the day after she had
taken the veil. He was secretary to King Alfonso. He ran away with her
to Rome, where, after one year of imprisonment, the pope, Martin III.,
released Anna from her vows, and gave them the nuptial blessing at the
instance of Don Juan Casanova, majordomo of the Vatican, and uncle of
Don Jacob. All the children born from that marriage died in their
infancy, with the exception of Don Juan, who, in 1475, married Donna
Eleonora Albini, by whom he had a son, Marco Antonio.
In 1481, Don Juan, having killed an officer of the king of Naples, was
compelled to leave Rome, and escaped to Como with his wife and his son;
but having left that city to seek his fortune, he died while traveling
with Christopher Columbus in the year 1493.
Marco Antonio became a noted poet of the school of Martial, and was
secretary to Cardinal Pompeo Colonna.
The satire against Giulio de Medicis, which we find in his works, having
made it necessary for him to leave Rome, he returned to Como, where he
married Abondia Rezzonica. The same Giulio de Medicis, having become
pope under the name of Clement VII, pardoned him and called him back to
Rome with his wife. The city having been taken and ransacked by the
Imperialists in 1526, Marco Antonio died there from an attack of the
plague; otherwise he would have died of misery, the soldiers of Charles
V. having taken all he possessed. Pierre Valerien speaks of him in his
work 'de infelicitate litteratorum'.
Three months after his death, his wife gave birth to Jacques Casanova,
who died in France at a great age, colonel in the army commanded by
Farnese against Henri, king of Navarre, afterwards king of France. He
had left in the city of Parma a son who married Theresa Conti, from whom
he had Jacques, who, in the year 1681, married Anna Roli. Jacques had
two sons, Jean-Baptiste and Gaetan-Joseph-Jacques. The eldest left Parma
in 1712, and was never heard of; the other also went away in 1715, being
only nineteen years old.
This is all I have found in my father's diary: from my mother's lips I
have heard the following particulars:
Gaetan-Joseph-Jacques left his family, madly in love with an actress
named Fragoletta, who performed the chambermaids. In his poverty, he
determined to earn a living by making the most of his own person. At
first he gave himself up to dancing, and five years afterwards became an
actor, making himself conspicuous by his conduct still more than by his
talent.
Whether from fickleness or from jealousy, he abandoned the Fragoletta,
and joined in Venice a troop of comedians then giving performances at
the Saint-Samuel Theatre. Opposite the house in which he had taken his
lodging resided a shoemaker, by name Jerome Farusi, with his wife
Marzia, and Zanetta, their only daughter--a perfect beauty sixteen years
of age. The young actor fell in love with this girl, succeeded in
gaining her affection, and in obtaining her consent to a runaway match.
It was the only way to win her, for, being an actor, he never could have
had Marzia's consent, still less Jerome's, as in their eyes a player was
a most awful individual. The young lovers, provided with the necessary
certificates and accompanied by two witnesses, presented themselves
before the Patriarch of Venice, who performed over them the marriage
ceremony. Marzia, Zanetta's mother, indulged in a good deal of
exclamation, and the father died broken-hearted.
I was born nine months afterwards, on the 2nd of April, 1725.
The following April my mother left me under the care of her own mother,
who had forgiven her as soon as she had heard that my father had
promised never to compel her to appear on the stage. This is a promise
which all actors make to the young girls they marry, and which they
never fulfil, simply because their wives never care much about claiming
from them the performance of it. Moreover, it turned out a very
fortunate thing for my mother that she had studied for the stage, for
nine years later, having been left a widow with six children, she could
not have brought them up if it had not been for the resources she found
in that profession.
I was only one year old when my father left me to go to London, where he
had an engagement. It was in that great city that my mother made her
first appearance on the stage, and in that city likewise that she gave
birth to my brother Francois, a celebrated painter of battles, now
residing in Vienna, where he has followed his profession since 1783.
Towards the end of the year 1728 my mother returned to Venice with her
husband, and as she had become an actress she continued her artistic
life. In 1730 she was delivered of my brother Jean, who became Director
of the Academy of painting at Dresden, and died there in 1795; and
during the three following years she became the mother of two daughters,
one of whom died at an early age, while the other married in Dresden,
where she still lived in 1798. I had also a posthumous brother, who
became a priest; he died in Rome fifteen years ago.
Let us now come to the dawn of my existence in the character of a
thinking being.
The organ of memory began to develop itself in me at the beginning of
August, 1733. I had at that time reached the age of eight years and four
months. Of what may have happened to me before that period I have not
the faintest recollection. This is the circumstance.
I was standing in the corner of a room bending towards the wall,
supporting my head, and my eyes fixed upon a stream of blood flowing
from my nose to the ground. My grandmother, Marzia, whose pet I was,
came to me, bathed my face with cold water, and, unknown to everyone in
the house, took me with her in a gondola as far as Muran, a thickly-
populated island only half a league distant from Venice.
Alighting from the gondola, we enter a wretched hole, where we find an
old woman sitting on a rickety bed, holding a black cat in her arms,
with five or six more purring around her. The two old cronies held
together a long discourse of which, most likely, I was the subject. At
the end of the dialogue, which was carried on in the patois of Forli,
the witch having received a silver ducat from my grandmother, opened a
box, took me in her arms, placed me in the box and locked me in it,
telling me not to be frightened--a piece of advice which would certainly
have had the contrary effect, if I had had any wits about me, but I was
stupefied. I kept myself quiet in a corner of the box, holding a
handkerchief to my nose because it was still bleeding, and otherwise
very indifferent to the uproar going on outside. I could hear in turn,
laughter, weeping, singing, screams, shrieks, and knocking against the
box, but for all that I cared nought. At last I am taken out of the box;
the blood stops flowing. The wonderful old witch, after lavishing
caresses upon me, takes off my clothes, lays me on the bed, burns some
drugs, gathers the smoke in a sheet which she wraps around me,
pronounces incantations, takes the sheet off me, and gives me five
sugar-plums of a very agreeable taste. Then she immediately rubs my
temples and the nape of my neck with an ointment exhaling a delightful
perfume, and puts my clothes on me again. She told me that my
haemorrhage would little by little leave me, provided I should never
disclose to any one what she had done to cure me, and she threatened me,
on the other hand, with the loss of all my blood and with death, should
I ever breathe a word concerning those mysteries. After having thus
taught me my lesson, she informed me that a beautiful lady would pay me
a visit during the following night, and that she would make me happy, on
condition that I should have sufficient control over myself never to
mention to anyone my having received such a visit. Upon this we left and
returned home.
I fell asleep almost as soon as I was in bed, without giving a thought
to the beautiful visitor I was to receive; but, waking up a few hours
afterwards, I saw, or fancied I saw, coming down the chimney, a dazzling
woman, with immense hoops, splendidly attired, and wearing on her head a
crown set with precious stones, which seemed to me sparkling with fire.
With slow steps, but with a majestic and sweet countenance, she came
forward and sat on my bed; then taking several small boxes from her
pocket, she emptied their contents over my head, softly whispering a few
words, and after giving utterance to a long speech, not a single word of
which I understood, she kissed me and disappeared the same way she had
come. I soon went again to sleep.
The next morning, my grandmother came to dress me, and the moment she
was near my bed, she cautioned me to be silent, threatening me with
death if I dared to say anything respecting my night's adventures. This
command, laid upon me by the only woman who had complete authority over
me, and whose orders I was accustomed to obey blindly, caused me to
remember the vision, and to store it, with the seal of secrecy, in the
inmost corner of my dawning memory. I had not, however, the slightest
inclination to mention the circumstances to anyone; in the first place,
because I did not suppose it would interest anybody, and in the second
because I would not have known whom to make a confidant of. My disease
had rendered me dull and retired; everybody pitied me and left me to
myself; my life was considered likely to be but a short one, and as to
my parents, they never spoke to me.
After the journey to Muran, and the nocturnal visit of the fairy, I
continued to have bleeding at the nose, but less from day to day, and my
memory slowly developed itself. I learned to read in less than a month.
It would be ridiculous, of course, to attribute this cure to such
follies, but at the same time I think it would be wrong to assert that
they did not in any way contribute to it. As far as the apparition of
the beautiful queen is concerned, I have always deemed it to be a dream,
unless it should have been some masquerade got up for the occasion, but
it is not always in the druggist's shop that are found the best remedies
for severe diseases. Our ignorance is every day proved by some wonderful
phenomenon, and I believe this to be the reason why it is so difficult
to meet with a learned man entirely untainted with superstition. We
know, as a matter of course, that there never have been any sorcerers in
this world, yet it is true that their power has always existed in the
estimation of those to whom crafty knaves have passed themselves off as
such. 'Somnio nocturnos lemures portentaque Thessalia vides'.
Many things become real which, at first, had no existence but in our
imagination, and, as a natural consequence, many facts which have been
attributed to Faith may not always have been miraculous, although they
are true miracles for those who lend to Faith a boundless power.
The next circumstance of any importance to myself which I recollect
happened three months after my trip to Muran, and six weeks before my
father's death. I give it to my readers only to convey some idea of the
manner in which my nature was expanding.
One day, about the middle of November, I was with my brother Francois,
two years younger than I, in my father's room, watching him attentively
as he was working at optics. A large lump of crystal, round and cut into
facets, attracted my attention. I took it up, and having brought it near
my eyes I was delighted to see that it multiplied objects. The wish to
possess myself of it at once got hold of me, and seeing myself
unobserved I took my opportunity and hid it in my pocket.
A few minutes after this my father looked about for his crystal, and
unable to find it, he concluded that one of us must have taken it. My
brother asserted that he had not touched it, and I, although guilty,
said the same; but my father, satisfied that he could not be mistaken,
threatened to search us and to thrash the one who had told him a story.
I pretended to look for the crystal in every corner of the room, and,
watching my opportunity I slyly slipped it in the pocket of my brother's
jacket. At first I was sorry for what I had done, for I might as well
have feigned to find the crystal somewhere about the room; but the evil
deed was past recall. My father, seeing that we were looking in vain,
lost patience, searched us, found the unlucky ball of crystal in the
pocket of the innocent boy, and inflicted upon him the promised
thrashing. Three or four years later I was foolish enough to boast
before my brother of the trick I had then played on him; he never
forgave me, and has never failed to take his revenge whenever the
opportunity offered.
However, having at a later period gone to confession, and accused myself
to the priest of the sin with every circumstance surrounding it, I
gained some knowledge which afforded me great satisfaction. My
confessor, who was a Jesuit, told me that by that deed I had verified
the meaning of my first name, Jacques, which, he said, meant, in Hebrew,
"supplanter," and that God had changed for that reason the name of the
ancient patriarch into that of Israel, which meant "knowing." He had
deceived his brother Esau.
Six weeks after the above adventure my father was attacked with an
abscess in the head which carried him off in a week. Dr. Zambelli first
gave him oppilative remedies, and, seeing his mistake, he tried to mend
it by administering castoreum, which sent his patient into convulsions
and killed him. The abscess broke out through the ear one minute after
his death, taking its leave after killing him, as if it had no longer
any business with him. My father departed this life in the very prime of
his manhood. He was only thirty-six years of age, but he was followed to
his grave by the regrets of the public, and more particularly of all the
patricians amongst whom he was held as above his profession, not less on
account of his gentlemanly behaviour than on account of his extensive
knowledge in mechanics.
Two days before his death, feeling that his end was at hand, my father
expressed a wish to see us all around his bed, in the presence of his
wife and of the Messieurs Grimani, three Venetian noblemen whose
protection he wished to entreat in our favour. After giving us his
blessing, he requested our mother, who was drowned in tears, to give her
sacred promise that she would not educate any of us for the stage, on
which he never would have appeared himself had he not been led to it by
an unfortunate attachment. My mother gave her promise, and the three
noblemen said that they would see to its being faithfully kept.
Circumstances helped our mother to fulfill her word.
At that time my mother had been pregnant for six months, and she was
allowed to remain away from the stage until after Easter. Beautiful and
young as she was, she declined all the offers of marriage which were
made to her, and, placing her trust in Providence, she courageously
devoted herself to the task of bringing up her young family.
She considered it a duty to think of me before the others, not so much
from a feeling of preference as in consequence of my disease, which had
such an effect upon me that it was difficult to know what to do with me.
I was very weak, without any appetite, unable to apply myself to
anything, and I had all the appearance of an idiot. Physicians disagreed
as to the cause of the disease. He loses, they would say, two pounds of
blood every week; yet there cannot be more than sixteen or eighteen
pounds in his body. What, then, can cause so abundant a bleeding? One
asserted that in me all the chyle turned into blood; another was of
opinion that the air I was breathing must, at each inhalation, increase
the quantity of blood in my lungs, and contended that this was the
reason for which I always kept my mouth open. I heard of it all six
years afterward from M. Baffo, a great friend of my late father.
This M. Baffo consulted the celebrated Doctor Macop, of Padua, who sent
him his opinion by writing. This consultation, which I have still in my
possession, says that our blood is an elastic fluid which is liable to
diminish or to increase in thickness, but never in quantity, and that my
haemorrhage could only proceed from the thickness of the mass of my
blood, which relieved itself in a natural way in order to facilitate
circulation. The doctor added that I would have died long before, had
not nature, in its wish for life, assisted itself, and he concluded by
stating that the cause of the thickness of my blood could only be
ascribed to the air I was breathing and that consequently I must have a
change of air, or every hope of cure be abandoned. He thought likewise,
that the stupidity so apparent on my countenance was caused by nothing
else but the thickness of my blood.
M. Baffo, a man of sublime genius, a most lascivious, yet a great and
original poet, was therefore instrumental in bringing about the decision
which was then taken to send me to Padua, and to him I am indebted for
my life. He died twenty years after, the last of his ancient patrician
family, but his poems, although obscene, will give everlasting fame to
his name. The state-inquisitors of Venice have contributed to his
celebrity by their mistaken strictness. Their persecutions caused his
manuscript works to become precious. They ought to have been aware that
despised things are forgotten.
As soon as the verdict given by Professor Macop had been approved of,
the Abbe Grimani undertook to find a good boarding-house in Padua for
me, through a chemist of his acquaintance who resided in that city. His
name was Ottaviani, and he was also an antiquarian of some repute. In a
few days the boarding-house was found, and on the 2nd day of April,
1734, on the very day I had accomplished my ninth year, I was taken to
Padua in a 'burchiello', along the Brenta Canal. We embarked at ten
o'clock in the evening, immediately after supper.
The 'burchiello' may be considered a small floating house. There is a
large saloon with a smaller cabin at each end, and rooms for servants
fore and aft. It is a long square with a roof, and cut on each side by
glazed windows with shutters. The voyage takes eight hours. M. Grimani,
M. Baffo, and my mother accompanied me. I slept with her in the saloon,
and the two friends passed the night in one of the cabins. My mother
rose at day break, opened one of the windows facing the bed, and the
rays of the rising sun, falling on my eyes, caused me to open them. The
bed was too low for me to see the land; I could see through the window
only the tops of the trees along the river. The boat was sailing with
such an even movement that I could not realize the fact of our moving,
so that the trees, which, one after the other, were rapidly disappearing
from my sight, caused me an extreme surprise. "Ah, dear mother!" I
exclaimed, "what is this? the trees are walking!" At that very moment
the two noblemen came in, and reading astonishment on my countenance,
they asked me what my thoughts were so busy about. "How is it," I
answered, "that the trees are walking."
They all laughed, but my mother, heaving a great sigh, told me, in a
tone of deep pity, "The boat is moving, the trees are not. Now dress
yourself."
I understood at once the reason of the phenomenon. "Then it may be,"
said I, "that the sun does not move, and that we, on the contrary, are
revolving from west to east." At these words my good mother fairly
screamed. M. Grimani pitied my foolishness, and I remained dismayed,
grieved, and ready to cry. M. Baffo brought me life again. He rushed to
me, embraced me tenderly, and said, "Thou are right, my child. The sun
does not move; take courage, give heed to your reasoning powers and let
others laugh."
My mother, greatly surprised, asked him whether he had taken leave of
his senses to give me such lessons; but the philosopher, not even
condescending to answer her, went on sketching a theory in harmony with
my young and simple intelligence. This was the first real pleasure I
enjoyed in my life. Had it not been for M. Baffo, this circumstance
might have been enough to degrade my understanding; the weakness of
credulity would have become part of my mind. The ignorance of the two
others would certainly have blunted in me the edge of a faculty which,
perhaps, has not carried me very far in my after life, but to which
alone I feel that I am indebted for every particle of happiness I enjoy
when I look into myself.
We reached Padua at an early hour and went to Ottaviani's house; his
wife loaded me with caresses. I found there five or six children,
amongst them a girl of eight years, named Marie, and another of seven,
Rose, beautiful as a seraph. Ten years later Marie became the wife of
the broker Colonda, and Rose, a few years afterwards, married a
nobleman, Pierre Marcello, and had one son and two daughters, one of
whom was wedded to M. Pierre Moncenigo, and the other to a nobleman of
the Carrero family. This last marriage was afterwards nullified. I shall
have, in the course of events, to speak of all these persons, and that
is my reason for mentioning their names here.
Ottaviani took us at once to the house where I was to board. It was only
a few yards from his own residence, at Sainte-Marie d'Advance, in the
parish of Saint-Michel, in the house of an old Sclavonian woman, who let
the first floor to Signora Mida, wife of a Sclavonian colonel. My small
trunk was laid open before the old woman, to whom was handed an
inventory of all its contents, together with six sequins for six months
paid in advance. For this small sum she undertook to feed me, to keep me
clean, and to send me to a day-school. Protesting that it was not
enough, she accepted these terms. I was kissed and strongly commanded to
be always obedient and docile, and I was left with her.
In this way did my family get rid of me.
CHAPTER II
My Grandmother Comes to Padua, and Takes Me to Dr. Gozzi's School--My
First Love Affair
As soon as I was left alone with the Sclavonian woman, she took me up to
the garret, where she pointed out my bed in a row with four others,
three of which belonged to three young boys of my age, who at that
moment were at school, and the fourth to a servant girl whose province
it was to watch us and to prevent the many peccadilloes in which school-
boys are wont to indulge. After this visit we came downstairs, and I was
taken to the garden with permission to walk about until dinner-time.
I felt neither happy nor unhappy; I had nothing to say. I had neither
fear nor hope, nor even a feeling of curiosity; I was neither cheerful
nor sad. The only thing which grated upon me was the face of the
mistress of the house. Although I had not the faintest idea either of
beauty or of ugliness, her face, her countenance, her tone of voice, her
language, everything in that woman was repulsive to me. Her masculine
features repelled me every time I lifted my eyes towards her face to
listen to what she said to me. She was tall and coarse like a trooper;
her complexion was yellow, her hair black, her eyebrows long and thick,
and her chin gloried in a respectable bristly beard: to complete the
picture, her hideous, half-naked bosom was hanging half-way down her
long chest; she may have been about fifty. The servant was a stout
country girl, who did all the work of the house; the garden was a square
of some thirty feet, which had no other beauty than its green
appearance.
Towards noon my three companions came back from school, and they at once
spoke to me as if we had been old acquaintances, naturally giving me
credit for such intelligence as belonged to my age, but which I did not
possess. I did not answer them, but they were not baffled, and they at
last prevailed upon me to share their innocent pleasures. I had to run,
to carry and be carried, to turn head over heels, and I allowed myself
to be initiated into those arts with a pretty good grace until we were
summoned to dinner. I sat down to the table; but seeing before me a
wooden spoon, I pushed it back, asking for my silver spoon and fork to
which I was much attached, because they were a gift from my good old
granny. The servant answered that the mistress wished to maintain
equality between the boys, and I had to submit, much to my disgust.
Having thus learned that equality in everything was the rule of the
house, I went to work like the others and began to eat the soup out of
the common dish, and if I did not complain of the rapidity with which my
companions made it disappear, I could not help wondering at such
inequality being allowed. To follow this very poor soup, we had a small
portion of dried cod and one apple each, and dinner was over: it was in
Lent. We had neither glasses nor cups, and we all helped ourselves out
of the same earthen pitcher to a miserable drink called graspia, which
is made by boiling in water the stems of grapes stripped of their fruit.
From the following day I drank nothing but water. This way of living
surprised me, for I did not know whether I had a right to complain of
it. After dinner the servant took me to the school, kept by a young
priest, Doctor Gozzi, with whom the Sclavonian woman had bargained for
my schooling at the rate of forty sous a month, or the eleventh part of
a sequin.
The first thing to do was to teach me writing, and I was placed amongst
children of five and six years, who did not fail to turn me into
ridicule on account of my age.
On my return to the boarding-house I had my supper, which, as a matter
of course, was worse than the dinner, and I could not make out why the
right of complaint should be denied me. I was then put to bed, but there
three well-known species of vermin kept me awake all night, besides the
rats, which, running all over the garret, jumped on my bed and fairly
made my blood run cold with fright. This is the way in which I began to
feel misery, and to learn how to suffer it patiently. The vermin, which
feasted upon me, lessened my fear of the rats, and by a very lucky
system of compensation, the dread of the rats made me less sensitive to
the bites of the vermin. My mind was reaping benefit from the very
struggle fought between the evils which surrounded me. The servant was
perfectly deaf to my screaming.
As soon as it was daylight I ran out of the wretched garret, and, after
complaining to the girl of all I had endured during the night, I asked
her to give me a Clean shirt, the one I had on being disgusting to look
at, but she answered that I could only change my linen on a Sunday, and
laughed at me when I threatened to complain to the mistress. For the
first time in my life I shed tears of sorrow and of anger, when I heard
my companions scoffing at me. The poor wretches shared my unhappy
condition, but they were used to it, and that makes all the difference.
Sorely depressed, I went to school, but only to sleep soundly through
the morning. One of my comrades, in the hope of turning the affair into
ridicule at my expense, told the doctor the reason of my being so
sleepy. The good priest, however, to whom without doubt Providence had
guided me, called me into his private room, listened to all I had to
say, saw with his own eyes the proofs of my misery, and moved by the
sight of the blisters which disfigured my innocent skin, he took up his
cloak, went with me to my boarding-house, and shewed the woman the state
I was in. She put on a look of great astonishment, and threw all the
blame upon the servant. The doctor being curious to see my bed, I was,
as much as he was, surprised at the filthy state of the sheets in which
I had passed the night. The accursed woman went on blaming the servant,
and said that she would discharge her; but the girl, happening to be
close by, and not relishing the accusation, told her boldly that the
fault was her own, and she then threw open the beds of my companions to
shew us that they did not experience any better treatment. The mistress,
raving, slapped her on the face, and the servant, to be even with her,
returned the compliment and ran away. The doctor left me there, saying
that I could not enter his school unless I was sent to him as clean as
the other boys. The result for me was a very sharp rebuke, with the
threat, as a finishing stroke, that if I ever caused such a broil again,
I would be ignominiously turned out of the house.
I could not make it out; I had just entered life, and I had no knowledge
of any other place but the house in which I had been born, in which I
had been brought up, and in which I had always seen cleanliness and
honest comfort. Here I found myself ill-treated, scolded, although it
did not seem possible that any blame could be attached to me. At last
the old shrew tossed a shirt in my face, and an hour later I saw a new
servant changing the sheets, after which we had our dinner.
My schoolmaster took particular care in instructing me. He gave me a
seat at his own desk, and in order to shew my proper appreciation of
such a favour, I gave myself up to my studies; at the end of the first
month I could write so well that I was promoted to the grammar class.
The new life I was leading, the half-starvation system to which I was
condemned, and most likely more than everything else, the air of Padua,
brought me health such as I had never enjoyed before, but that very
state of blooming health made it still more difficult for me to bear the
hunger which I was compelled to endure; it became unbearable. I was
growing rapidly; I enjoyed nine hours of deep sleep, unbroken by any
dreams, save that I always fancied myself sitting at a well-spread
table, and gratifying my cruel appetite, but every morning I could
realize in full the vanity and the unpleasant disappointment of
flattering dreams! This ravenous appetite would at last have weakened me
to death, had I not made up my mind to pounce upon, and to swallow,
every kind of eatables I could find, whenever I was certain of not being
seen.
Necessity begets ingenuity. I had spied in a cupboard of the kitchen
some fifty red herrings; I devoured them all one after the other, as
well as all the sausages which were hanging in the chimney to be smoked;
and in order to accomplish those feats without being detected, I was in
the habit of getting up at night and of undertaking my foraging
expeditions under the friendly veil of darkness. Every new-laid egg I
could discover in the poultry-yard, quite warm and scarcely dropped by
the hen, was a most delicious treat. I would even go as far as the
kitchen of the schoolmaster in the hope of pilfering something to eat.
The Sclavonian woman, in despair at being unable to catch the thieves,
turned away servant after servant. But, in spite of all my expeditions,
as I could not always find something to steal, I was as thin as a
walking skeleton.
My progress at school was so rapid during four or five months that the
master promoted me to the rank of dux. My province was to examine the
lessons of my thirty school-fellows, to correct their mistakes and
report to the master with whatever note of blame or of approval I
thought they deserved; but my strictness did not last long, for idle
boys soon found out the way to enlist my sympathy. When their Latin
lesson was full of mistakes, they would buy me off with cutlets and
roast chickens; they even gave me money. These proceedings excited my
covetousness, or, rather, my gluttony, and, not satisfied with levying a
tax upon the ignorant, I became a tyrant, and I refused well-merited
approbation to all those who declined paying the contribution I
demanded. At last, unable to bear my injustice any longer, the boys
accused me, and the master, seeing me convicted of extortion, removed me
from my exalted position. I would very likely have fared badly after my
dismissal, had not Fate decided to put an end to my cruel
apprenticeship.
Doctor Gozzi, who was attached to me, called me privately one day into
his study, and asked me whether I would feel disposed to carry out the
advice he would give me in order to bring about my removal from the
house of the Sclavonian woman, and my admission in his own family.
Finding me delighted at such an offer, he caused me to copy three
letters which I sent, one to the Abbe Grimani, another to my friend
Baffo, and the last to my excellent grandam. The half-year was nearly
out, and my mother not being in Venice at that period there was no time
to lose.
In my letters I gave a description of all my sufferings, and I
prognosticated my death were I not immediately removed from my boarding-
house and placed under the care of my school-master, who was disposed to
receive me; but he wanted two sequins a month.
M. Grimani did not answer me, and commissioned his friend Ottaviani to
scold me for allowing myself to be ensnared by the doctor; but M. Baffo
went to consult with my grandmother, who could not write, and in a
letter which he addressed to me he informed me that I would soon find
myself in a happier situation. And, truly, within a week the excellent
old woman, who loved me until her death, made her appearance as I was
sitting down to my dinner. She came in with the mistress of the house,
and the moment I saw her I threw my arms around her neck, crying
bitterly, in which luxury the old lady soon joined me. She sat down and
took me on her knees; my courage rose again. In the presence of the
Sclavonian woman I enumerated all my grievances, and after calling her
attention to the food, fit only for beggars, which I was compelled to
swallow, I took her upstairs to shew her my bed. I begged her to take me
out and give me a good dinner after six months of such starvation. The
boarding-house keeper boldly asserted that she could not afford better
for the amount she had received, and there was truth in that, but she
had no business to keep house and to become the tormentor of poor
children who were thrown on her hands by stinginess, and who required to
be properly fed.
My grandmother very quietly intimated her intention to take me away
forthwith, and asked her to put all my things in my trunk. I cannot
express my joy during these preparations. For the first time I felt that
kind of happiness which makes forgiveness compulsory upon the being who
enjoys it, and causes him to forget all previous unpleasantness. My
grandmother took me to the inn, and dinner was served, but she could
hardly eat anything in her astonishment at the voracity with which I was
swallowing my food. In the meantime Doctor Gozzi, to whom she had sent
notice of her arrival, came in, and his appearance soon prepossessed her
in his favour. He was then a fine-looking priest, twenty-six years of
age, chubby, modest, and respectful. In less than a quarter of an hour
everything was satisfactorily arranged between them. The good old lady
counted out twenty-four sequins for one year of my schooling, and took a
receipt for the same, but she kept me with her for three days in order
to have me clothed like a priest, and to get me a wig, as the filthy
state of my hair made it necessary to have it all cut off.
At the end of the three days she took me to the doctor's house, so as to
see herself to my installation and to recommend me to the doctor's
mother, who desired her to send or to buy in Padua a bedstead and
bedding; but the doctor having remarked that, his own bed being very
wide, I might sleep with him, my grandmother expressed her gratitude for
all his kindness, and we accompanied her as far as the burchiello she
had engaged to return to Venice.
The family of Doctor Gozzi was composed of his mother, who had great
reverence for him, because, a peasant by birth, she did not think
herself worthy of having a son who was a priest, and still more a doctor
in divinity; she was plain, old, and cross; and of his father, a
shoemaker by trade, working all day long and never addressing a word to
anyone, not even during the meals. He only became a sociable being on
holidays, on which occasions he would spend his time with his friends in
some tavern, coming home at midnight as drunk as a lord and singing
verses from Tasso. When in this blissful state the good man could not
make up his mind to go to bed, and became violent if anyone attempted to
compel him to lie down. Wine alone gave him sense and spirit, for when
sober he was incapable of attending to the simplest family matter, and
his wife often said that he never would have married her had not his
friends taken care to give him a good breakfast before he went to the
church.
But Doctor Gozzi had also a sister, called Bettina, who at the age of
thirteen was pretty, lively, and a great reader of romances. Her father
and mother scolded her constantly because she was too often looking out
of the window, and the doctor did the same on account of her love for
reading. This girl took at once my fancy without my knowing why, and
little by little she kindled in my heart the first spark of a passion
which, afterwards became in me the ruling one.
Six months after I had been an inmate in the house, the doctor found
himself without scholars; they all went away because I had become the
sole object of his affection. He then determined to establish a college,
and to receive young boys as boarders; but two years passed before he
met with any success. During that period he taught me everything he
knew; true, it was not much; yet it was enough to open to me the high
road to all sciences. He likewise taught me the violin, an
accomplishment which proved very useful to me in a peculiar
circumstance, the particulars of which I will give in good time. The
excellent doctor, who was in no way a philosopher, made me study the
logic of the Peripatetics, and the cosmography of the ancient system of
Ptolemy, at which I would laugh, teasing the poor doctor with theorems
to which he could find no answer. His habits, moreover, were
irreproachable, and in all things connected with religion, although no
bigot, he was of the greatest strictness, and, admitting everything as
an article of faith, nothing appeared difficult to his conception. He
believed the deluge to have been universal, and he thought that, before
that great cataclysm, men lived a thousand years and conversed with God,
that Noah took one hundred years to build the ark, and that the earth,
suspended in the air, is firmly held in the very centre of the universe
which God had created from nothing. When I would say and prove that it
was absurd to believe in the existence of nothingness, he would stop me
short and call me a fool.
He could enjoy a good bed, a glass of wine, and cheerfulness at home. He
did not admire fine wits, good jests or criticism, because it easily
turns to slander, and he would laugh at the folly of men reading
newspapers which, in his opinion, always lied and constantly repeated
the same things. He asserted that nothing was more troublesome than
incertitude, and therefore he condemned thought because it gives birth
to doubt.
His ruling passion was preaching, for which his face and his voice
qualified him; his congregation was almost entirely composed of women of
whom, however, he was the sworn enemy; so much so, that he would not
look them in the face even when he spoke to them. Weakness of the flesh
and fornication appeared to him the most monstrous of sins, and he would
be very angry if I dared to assert that, in my estimation, they were the
most venial of faults. His sermons were crammed with passages from the
Greek authors, which he translated into Latin. One day I ventured to
remark that those passages ought to be translated into Italian because
women did not understand Latin any more than Greek, but he took offence,
and I never had afterwards the courage to allude any more to the matter.
Moreover he praised me to his friends as a wonder, because I had learned
to read Greek alone, without any assistance but a grammar.
During Lent, in the year 1736, my mother, wrote to the doctor; and, as
she was on the point of her departure for St. Petersburg, she wished to
see me, and requested him to accompany me to Venice for three or four
days. This invitation set him thinking, for he had never seen Venice,
never frequented good company, and yet he did not wish to appear a
novice in anything. We were soon ready to leave Padua, and all the
family escorted us to the 'burchiello'.
My mother received the doctor with a most friendly welcome; but she was
strikingly beautiful, and my poor master felt very uncomfortable, not
daring to look her in the face, and yet called upon to converse with
her. She saw the dilemma he was in, and thought she would have some
amusing sport about it should opportunity present itself. I, in the
meantime, drew the attention of everyone in her circle; everybody had
known me as a fool, and was amazed at my improvement in the short space
of two years. The doctor was overjoyed, because he saw that the full
credit of my transformation was given to him.
The first thing which struck my mother unpleasantly was my light-
coloured wig, which was not in harmony with my dark complexion, and
contrasted most woefully with my black eyes and eyebrows. She inquired
from the doctor why I did not wear my own hair, and he answered that,
with a wig, it was easier for his sister to keep me clean. Everyone
smiled at the simplicity of the answer, but the merriment increased
when, to the question made by my mother whether his sister was married,
I took the answer upon myself, and said that Bettina was the prettiest
girl of Padua, and was only fourteen years of age. My mother promised
the doctor a splendid present for his sister on condition that she would
let me wear my own hair, and he promised that her wishes would be
complied with. The peruke-maker was then called, and I had a wig which
matched my complexion.
Soon afterwards all the guests began to play cards, with the exception
of my master, and I went to see my brothers in my grandmother's room.
Francois shewed me some architectural designs which I pretended to
admire; Jean had nothing to skew me, and I thought him a rather
insignificant boy. The others were still very young.
At the supper-table, the doctor, seated next to my mother, was very
awkward. He would very likely not have said one word, had not an
Englishman, a writer of talent, addressed him in Latin; but the doctor,
being unable to make him out, modestly answered that he did not
understand English, which caused much hilarity. M. Baffo, however,
explained the puzzle by telling us that Englishmen read and pronounced
Latin in the same way that they read and spoke their own language, and I
remarked that Englishmen were wrong as much as we would be, if we
pretended to read and to pronounce their language according to Latin
rules. The Englishman, pleased with my reasoning, wrote down the
following old couplet, and gave it to me to read:
'Dicite, grammatici, cur mascula nomina cunnus, Et cur femineum mentula
nomen habet.'
After reading it aloud, I exclaimed, "This is Latin indeed."
"We know that," said my mother, "but can you explain it?"
"To explain it is not enough," I answered; "it is a question which is
worthy of an answer." And after considering for a moment, I wrote the
following pentameter:
'Disce quod a domino nomina servus habet.'
This was my first literary exploit, and I may say that in that very
instant the seed of my love for literary fame was sown in my breast, for
the applause lavished upon me exalted me to the very pinnacle of
happiness. The Englishman, quite amazed at my answer, said that no boy
of eleven years had ever accomplished such a feat, embraced me
repeatedly, and presented me with his watch. My mother, inquisitive like
a woman, asked M. Grimani to tell her the meaning of the lines, but as
the abbe was not any wiser than she was M. Baffo translated it in a
whisper. Surprised at my knowledge, she rose from her chair to get a
valuable gold watch and presented to my master, who, not knowing how to
express his deep gratitude, treated us to the most comic scene. My
mother, in order to save him from the difficulty of paying her a
compliment, offered him her cheek. He had only to give her a couple of
kisses, the easiest and the most innocent thing in good company; but the
poor man was on burning coals, and so completely out of countenance that
he would, I truly believe, rather have died than give the kisses. He drew back with his head down, and he was allowed to remain in peace until we retired for the night. |
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