“Why don’t you stay tomorrow, and earn a further forty carlini on the other three flagons?” he asked unsteadily.
Casanova shrugged. “I am in no need of money. I augmented one flagon merely to amuse and surprise you.”
Panagiottis’ glance was laden with envy and wonder.
“You must be very wealthy,” he said.
“I should be were it not that I am working at the augmentation of gold, which is a very costly operation.”
“But where is the need? The augmentation of mercury should suffice any man. Tell me, what does the augmentation cost?”
“One and a half per cent.”
“And would that which you have increased be susceptible of further increase?”
“Oh, no. If that were so, it would be an inexhaustible source of wealth.”
And thereupon, to play out his part, Casanova rose, called the landlord, paid for the supper, and ordered a carriage and a pair of horses for eight o’clock the next morning. Bidding good-night to the chagrined and reluctant Panagiottis, and promising to send him an order for a barrel of Muscadine later, Casanova went to bed, convinced that the Greek would not close his eyes all night.
He was in the act of dressing next morning when Panagiottis invaded his chamber, after due apology. Casanova received him cordially, and invited him to share his morning coffee, which stood steaming on the table.
Panagiottis came straight to business. “I have come to ask you if you could be induced to sell me your secret,” he announced.
“Why not?” was the genial answer. “When next we meet . . .”
“When next we meet?” cried the Greek in panic. “But when will that be?”
“Why, when you will. Should you come to Rome . . .”
Again Panagiottis interrupted. He was trembling with excitement.
“But why not now? Why not now?”
“Now?” Casanova stared. “My horses are harnessed. I am expected in Rome, and already I have delayed upon the journey.”
“But surely no great delay can be entailed in what I ask.”
He was in dread lest fortune should elude him after being brought within his reach.
Casanova became grave.
“That depends,” said he. “My secret is expensive and, after all, I do not really know you.”
Standing, he sipped his coffee calmly.
The Greek sat down. The truth is that his legs were yielding under him. Beads of perspiration gleamed on the arch of his heavy, pendulous nose — the brand of the acquisitive. He drew his gabardine about his slender shanks, and stroked his thinning black hair with an unsteady hand.
“But these are not reasons for delay,” he protested in distress. “I am sufficiently well-known here, and my credit is good. Do you need an earnest of it?”
A gesture of lofty deprecation was Casanova’s only answer.
“How much would you want for your secret?” Panagiottis asked point-blank.
Casanova’s answer was as prompt as it was calm.
“Two thousand gold ounces.”
At the mention of so vast a sum the Greek gasped like a fish. Casanova smiled and reached for his hat.
“You see,” he said. “Besides, it is striking eight, and my horses are waiting.”
Panagiottis swallowed audibly. “I will p-pay it,” he stammered, “provided that I, myself, augment the 30lb I have here with the ingredients you shall name, which I myself shall purchase.”
“The condition is natural,” Casanova agreed. “But a contract would be necessary.”
“You shall have it, sir. It is what I should myself desire.”
“But it will need time, and my horses — —”
“Put off the journey for an hour or two,” the Greek besought him.
Casanova took a turn as if considering.
“Sir, sir, your hesitation wounds me!” burst from his agonized companion. “Look!” He snatched up a pen and wrote swiftly. “Take this. The banker de Laura lives a hundred yards from here. Present it and ask him for information of my credit.”
Casanova took the note. It was draft running as follows:
Pay the bearer at sight fifty gold ounces for account of Panagiottis.
He smiled almost wistfully. “Really,” he was beginning, “so much is not necessary to — —”
“Take it, please — please. I insist.”
“Very well.”
Casanova went, came back, and placed the fifty ounces on the table.
“Your banker’s account of you is quite satisfactory,” said he. “To oblige you — since you are so set on it — I have bidden the landlord put back the horses until noon, so that we may conclude the transaction.” And drawing up a chair, he sat down facing the Greek.
Panagiottis expressed his relief by a sigh, and insisted that as a preliminary Casanova should pocket the fifty ounces. Casanova did so, under protest, and they proceeded to draw up the contract. It ran as follows:
I agree to pay Messer Giacomo di Casanova the sum of two thousand gold ounces when he shall have taught me how and by what ingredients I may augment mercury by one quarter, without deterioration of its quality, equal to that which he sold at Macerata in my presence on the 25th of August, 1743.
Having signed it, Panagiottis delivered it to Casanova, together with a bill of exchange for two thousand ounces on a Roman banker, which, if necessary, he said, de Laura would discount at once upon a word from himself. So much being concluded, Casanova proceeded to impart the secret, naming the ingredients — lead and bismuth, the first which by its nature amalgamates with mercury, the second which restores its fluidity, impaired by the amalgamation.
The Greek went off to perform the operation, on the understanding that they should dine together, when he would report upon the results. He returned at noon, a pensive, saddened man, which was quite as Casanova had expected. Nevertheless he hailed his pupil heartily.
“Well?” he cried.
Panagiottis shook his head. “It is not well at all,” he said gloomily. “The augmentation is made, but the mercury is not perfect.”
Casanova’s tone and manner betrayed impatience. “It is equal to that which I sold yesterday at Macerata, as the contract stipulates.”
“Ah, but the contract also says that there must be no deterioration of quality. And you must confess that the quality has deteriorated. So true is this that no further augmentation is possible.”
“Did I not tell you so at the beginning?” Casanova reminded him. “I stand by the condition of equality to that which I sold yesterday. You will force me to go to law with you, and the case will go against you.” He displayed a nice blend of regret and indignation. “Should you happen to win, you may congratulate yourself upon having obtained my secret for nothing — though it will be worthless then to both of us, since it will be a secret no longer. I did not dream you capable of resorting to such trickery.”
Panagiottis rose, indignant. “Sir, I am incapable of trickery, or of taking an unfair advantage of any man.”
“Have you learnt my secret or have you not?” demanded Casanova. “And should I have imparted it to you without the contract? Sir, the world will laugh, and lawyers will make money out of us. I am distressed to think that I should so easily have been deluded. Meanwhile, here are your fifty ounces.”
And he smacked the money on the table bravely, though inwardly fainting from terror lest Panagiottis should take it.
But Panagiottis, shamed by the reproachful gesture, indignantly refused the money, and rose to leave the room. This was a declaration of war. But Casanova smiled, confident that peace would be easily concluded.
You are not to suppose that he ever dreamed of obtaining the two thousand ounces. He had foreseen precisely such a situation as had since arisen, and he was fully prepared to moderate his pretensions very considerably. He detained Panagiottis.
“It is necessary, sir, that you should take this money,” he insisted. “It belongs to you.”
Between m
isery and indignation Panagiottis again refused.
“You have placed me in an impossible situation,” he protested.
“Did I invite you to buy my secret? Or did you pester me into selling what you now refuse to pay for?”
“But you must confess that it is not worth two thousand ounces.”
“Yet that is the amount in the contract you have signed.”
They sat down to argue, the Greek as before insisting upon the condition that the mercury should present no deterioration of quality, Casanova urging the condition that it should be equal to the 15lb he had sold yesterday. Thus was half an hour consumed.
“We appear,” said Casanova at length, “to have reached a deadlock which only the lawyers can resolve, and you should be as reluctant as I am to appeal to them. I will make sacrifices rather than take that course. Have you any adjustment to propose?”
Panagiottis considered. “You shall retain the fifty ounces. I will pay you an additional fifty, and you shall surrender to me the contract and the bill of exchange.”
Casanova was more than satisfied, but his face remained grave, even sorrowful. Appearances demanded that he should yield reluctantly, and he did so only at the end of arguments which endured for another hour and a half. But when he did yield it was gracefully and graciously. Having pocketed the hundred ounces, he invited Panagiottis to dine with him, and they sat down together like the best of friends, despite the Greek’s uneasy feeling that he had taken a certain unfair advantage of a too confiding young cleric. To make amends he presented Casanova at parting with a case of beautiful razors and an order on his Naples warehouse for a barrel of the Muscadine the Venetian had praised. Thereupon they embraced and parted, thoroughly pleased each with the other.
Two days later, as Casanova, travelling now in state, was approaching Cesena, his carriage overtook a group that attracted his attention. Four papal guards were conducting a big, red-haired man in the habit of a brother of St Francis. The prisoner walked dejectedly, his head sunk upon his breast, his wrists pinioned behind him.
Looking more closely at that familiar figure, Casanova recognized his sometime travelling companion, Brother Stefano. He bade the postilions slacken to a walk.
“What’s this?” he asked the leader of the guards.
“A rascally bandit who goes about disguised as a monk to rob honest folk. We heard of him at Ancona, where he had a companion who has given us the slip. But we’ve got this one at least, and he’ll go to the hulks where he belongs.”
Casanova’s eyes met Stefano’s, and he saw recognition and amazement dawning in them. In the circumstances Casanova thought it best not to mention his seven sequins.
As he was whirled away in a cloud of dust, he reflected that dishonest practices must sooner or later bring a man to the galleys, congratulated himself upon the incident which had separated him from Stefano, and reclining luxuriously in his chaise considered how — as in his own case — rectitude of behaviour is properly rewarded sooner or later.
THE PRIEST OF MARS
It was in Bologna in the spring of the year 1744, that Casanova took the great resolve to exchange his abbé’s dress and his prospect of Holy Orders for the military coat, and the only priesthood to which his adventurous spirit could conceivably be a credit — the priesthood of Mars.
He was in his twentieth year at the time, tall, vigorous, handsome and magnetic; and to the audacity that was natural to him he gathered additional assurance from the fact that he was well-equipped with funds, having left Rome with two hundred sequins in gold and a letter of credit on Ancona for five hundred more.
He sought a tailor, and issued presently from his hands in a handsome military coat of heavy white cloth with silver lace and gold and silver shoulder knot, and a pale blue silk waistcoat descending half-way to his knees; lacquered canon boots, a rakishly looped hat displaying a black cockade, a long rapier and a long cane completed his equipment, and in this guise he paraded the town and ruffled it in the cafés of Bologna, enjoying the sensation of drawing admiring, questioning glances such as he had never attracted in his modest clerical garments.
Thus arrayed, and carrying himself with the proper degree of insolence, he reappeared in his native Venice a week later, to the scandal of all those who had seen him depart thence for Rome, and were conceiving him by now to be well on the way to politico-ecclesiastical advancement. None was more scandalized than the old patrician abbé Grimani, who had acted in some sort as his guardian; yet seeing him well supplied with funds and coming to consider his unruly nature, he ended by confessing that perhaps this young doctor of canon law had chosen wisely, and presented him with a strong recommendation to the Venetian Secretary for War. This recommendation was supported by that of Casanova’s own bold martial bearing and intrepid air. Further still, Grimani had presented him to a lieutenant in the Venetian service, who was anxious from motives of ill-health to sell his commission and prepared to take a hundred sequins for it, and the Secretary for War being informed of all this and having talked a while with Casanova, agreed that he should enter the service, acquiring the lieutenant’s commission, but on condition that he served first as an ensign with however the promise that he should be promoted lieutenant within the year.
Thus the matter was settled, and Casanova embarked on the /Europa/, a fast frigate of seventy-two guns, which landed him eight days later at Corfu, to the garrison of which he was appointed.
He found it an agreeable place with no lack of society, whose head was the Proveditor-General of the Republic, an officer exercising a sovereign authority, and keeping splendid state, in which he was supported by three admirals of Venice, a dozen governors of galleys, as many chiefs of the army ashore and half that number of civil officers, all of whom were Venetian nobles, and most of whom had with them their wives and families.
The office of Proveditor-General was filled by General Dolfino, a well-preserved patrician of seventy-five, ignorant, vain, obstinate and choleric, who kept open house, holding a reception every evening, and at whose table twenty-four covers were always laid for chance guests.
There was a theatre at Corfu, which was intermittently supplied with a company of comedians, and no lack of gaming houses, for no restraints were placed upon gaming, and play was inclined to run high. The faro tables proved an immediate attraction to Casanova. Although what little past experience he had of them had been disastrous, yet the instincts of play were in his blood.
It took him three months to lose some six hundred sequins, yet whatever his losses he never lost his magnificent calm. Those inherited histrionic talents of his stood him in good stead, and even when staking his last sequins, despite the agony of apprehension in his soul, he preserved a careless smile, and when they were swept away he rose with an indifferent air and a stifled yawn. He had beggared himself of all but his jewels, worth some hundred sequins, but he had not done it quite in vain. The indifference with which he lost had earned him the reputation of a /beau joueur/ and a man of wealth, since he allowed none to guess that he had ruined himself. Now the world loves wealth and it loves good losers; when, in addition, a man is young, handsome, and witty, he will find all doors opening before him. Thus it came about that Casanova found himself high in the esteem of Corfu society.
He was still wondering how to turn this circumstance to advantage when Major Maroli, a professional gamester at whose faro bank Casanova had lost most of his money, meeting him one day, reproached him with coming no more to play.
“I am tired of losing,” said Casanova.
“Why not come and win?”
“Because it is always the bank that wins.”
“Then why not join the bank?”
Casanova stared. Maroli explained himself. His explanation was a proposal of partnership. He saw in Casanova, with his reputation for wealth, his popularity, his easy, laughing ways, his magnificent insouciance as a player, the ideal partner of a bank which was beginning to excite suspicion. Casanova desired a little while
in which to consider a proposal he had instantly determined to accept.
He pawned his jewels for a hundred sequins, and with this sum acquired a partnership in the major’s bank. Thus came about his association with Maroli. He acted as croupier when the major dealt, and when he dealt himself the major performed the like office by him. Now Maroli handled the cards in a fashion that inspired terror, whilst Casanova on the contrary was always easy and gay, winning without avidity and losing without regrets, a bearing always pleasing to punters. The consequence was that Casanova came to deal oftener than Maroli, and that the bank — as the latter had shrewdly expected — increased rapidly in popularity and prosperity.
We gather that Maroli initiated him into the secrets of success. But he does not betray those secrets; in fact he does little more than hint at their existence.
“Those addicted to games of chance,” he says, “will always lose unless they know how to captivate fortune by playing with real advantages dependent upon calculation or dexterity, but independent of luck. I believe that a wise and prudent player may avail himself of the one and the other without incurring blame or without rendering it possible to impugn his honour.”
Such a wise and prudent player it is evident that Casanova now became, for he grew wealthy rapidly — prodigally spending his money with almost equal rapidity — and acquired great fame as a gamester. He saw himself now the idol of the ladies, the envied of the men, once more upon the high road to fortune. In the following September he received the honour of being appointed adjutant to the Marquis Rinolfo, the Admiral-in-Chief of the Galeasses — those almost obsolescent vessels with the body of frigates and the benches of galleys, each rowed in calm weather by five hundred convicts. With the appointment he took up his abode at the residence of the Marquis.
But Fortune, into whose hands he had come to abandon himself with more than Oriental fatalism, was preparing him a fall even whilst exalting him.
Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini Page 534
