Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini

by Rafael Sabatini

  From Camporese, his captain, Casanova had obtained as a valet a French soldier named La Valeur, a drunken, libertine rascal whose vices Casanova overlooked in consideration of his talent as a hairdresser. Towards the middle of November La Valeur caught a chill which resulted in congestion of the lungs. Casanova sent him to hospital, and informed his captain. Four days later, happening to meet Camporese, he learnt that La Valeur was dying.

  “I am afraid you will not see him again,” said the captain. “He has already received the last sacrament.”

  Casanova was therefore, if grieved, not at all surprised to receive from Camporese that evening the news that the man was dead. But he was very much surprised by what accompanied the announcement.

  The captain handed him a letter, a baptismal certificate, and a copper seal bearing a coat-of-arms under a ducal coronet. The letter was in French, of which Camporese had no knowledge, and he came now to beg Casanova to translate it.

  “I have received it,” he said, “from La Valeur’s confessor.”

  Casanova took it, marvelling, for he knew that the rude Picardy peasant could hardly write. With a growing amazement he read the following document:

  It is my will that this paper, written and signed by my own hand, shall be delivered to my captain only after my death. Until then my confessor can make no use of it, since he receives it from me under the seal of the confessional. I beg my captain so to bury me that my body may be exhumed should the Duke, my father, desire to remove it to France. I also beg him to send to the French Ambassador in Venice the enclosed baptismal certificate, the seal with the arms of my family, and a certificate of my death in proper form, so that all may be forwarded to my father, and that my rights of succession may pass to the prince, my brother. In witness whereof I append my signature. — François VI, Charles Philippe Louis Foucaud, Prince of La Rochefoucauld.

  The baptismal certificate, dated from St Sulpice, bore the same name; that of the Duke, his father, was given as François V, and that of his mother as Gabrielle du Plessis.

  Casanova read it through twice, once to himself, and once aloud to his captain, his amazement steadily increasing. He had in his time seen many forms of imposture, and at need practised one or two, but he could never have conceived any swindle at once so ridiculous and gratuitous as this, since the letter was not to be published until after the man’s death, and could therefore profit him nothing.

  He smiled as he returned the letter to Camporese, but observing the captain’s awe-stricken gravity his smile incontinently became a burst of laughter.

  “I see nothing to laugh at,” the captain rebuked him, scandalized.

  “That is what I find so amusing,” said Casanova disconcertingly. “What are you going to do with the letter?”

  “There is only one thing to do. Take it to his excellency at once.”

  “You will probably succeed in amusing him also,” said Casanova, on which the captain departed, too dignified to ask for explanations.

  A half-hour later, as Casanova at Maroli’s side was in the act of tearing the covers from a pack of cards with which to open the bank, Sanzonio, his fellow adjutant in the Admiral-in-Chief’s service, entered the café with the news of the real identity of La Valeur. He had just heard it at the residence of the Proveditor-General, who was even then issuing instructions for a funeral becoming the exalted rank of the deceased.

  Casanova smiled quietly to himself, but said nothing. He had never held a great opinion of General Dolfino’s intelligence, but he had certainly never supposed it to be as limited as Captain Camporese’s. After all, it was none of his business; his business at present was to empty the pockets of the eager punters facing him across the green table, and to this he applied himself with a diligence and an amiability which left nothing to be desired.

  But at the height of the game, an hour or so later, someone touched him on the shoulder. It was Lieutenant Minotto, the Proveditor’s aide-de-camp, who announced that his excellency was asking for Casanova.

  Casanova calmly finished the deal, then invited Maroli to take his place. The Major did so with an ill grace, cursing the dead lackey, to whom he attributed the interruption of a game running so smoothly in favour of the bank.

  At the Proveditor’s Casanova found a considerable company, all pervaded by an air of excitement. It was soon made evident to him that they had swallowed La Valeur’s posthumous imposture at a gulp, and he was beginning to conclude that he was the only person in Corfu with a proper complement of wits.

  Conscious that he was being stared at as the man who had committed the sacrilege of owning a prince for his hairdresser, he advanced through the throng towards the beckoning Proveditor.

  “So,” his excellency greeted him, “your lackey was a prince.”

  Casanova looked into the wrinkled, arrogant, rather vulturine old face under his heavily powdered wig. He smiled quietly.

  “I should never have suspected it whilst he lived, and I don’t believe it now that he’s dead,” he answered.

  It was an answer that sent a rustle through the company, and seemed to put his excellency out of countenance. The great man frowned.

  “How? You don’t believe it, and the man’s dead! You have seen his coat of arms, and his birth certificate, as well as the letter written in his own hand, and you must know that the hour of death is not the time to turn comedian.”

  “If your excellency believes all that to be so, then my duty is to say no more.”

  His excellency was annoyed. He was not accustomed to contradiction, and here was a form of contradiction that wounded his vanity by an implied reflection upon his acumen.

  “It can’t be other than true,” he insisted. “Your doubt amazes me.”

  “It springs from the fact that I am well acquainted with the man.”

  His excellency snorted. He permitted himself sarcasm.

  “And you are, of course, a connoisseur in princes?”

  “Thanks to my opportunities of consorting with men of your excellency’s quality.”

  The old eyes looked sharply, but vainly, into the bold, handsome young face to see whether any glint of mockery lurked behind the suspicious smoothness of that courtly answer.

  “Have you not seen his arms, under a ducal coronet? But perhaps you are not aware that M. de La Rochefoucauld is a duke and a peer of France?”

  “On the contrary, excellency. I am fully aware of it. I even know that François VI was married to a demoiselle de Vivonne.”

  “Bah! You know nothing.”

  Before that rude utterance into which his excellency’s exasperation had betrayed him, Casanova contented himself with bowing, and, as if seeing in it his dismissal, he withdrew into the background.

  He read in the eyes of some of the men about him satisfaction at what they accounted the discomfiture of a young man who was altogether too presumptuous.

  Conversation broke out about him. He heard one praising the handsome looks and noble air of his late valet; another extolled the rascal’s wit, and marvelled at the talent with which he had played his part so that none had ever guessed his real identity. A lady exclaimed that had she known him she would have succeeded in unmasking him, another proclaimed him always gay, amiable, and obliging, without arrogance towards his fellows, in all things a great gentleman. And then Madame de Sagredo, the wife of one of the sea-lords of Venice, turned provokingly upon Casanova.

  “You hear, sir, what is being said of him. Surely in all the time he was with you, you must have perceived something of this kind?”

  But she was very far from putting Casanova out of countenance.

  “I can only report him to you, madam, as I found him,” he answered, with a respectful inclination of his handsome head, “and I found him very gay, as has been said, often indeed to the point of idiocy. His only faults were that he was dirty, drunken, dissolute, obscene, quarrelsome, and a thief. I endured him because he dressed my hair as I like it.”

  A resentful silenc
e greeted that bold speech which so flatly contradicted the expressed opinion of the assembly, and then before anyone could answer him, Captain Camporese entered suddenly in a great state of excitement, and approached his excellency with the news that the prince still breathed; that the announcement of his death had been premature.

  In a flash Casanova saw light. The imposture — how contrived he could not think, nor did he ever discover — was not so gratuitous as he had imagined. He saw indeed how shrewdly La Valeur had made sure of its succeeding. And then he met the eye of General Dolfino fixed grimly upon him.

  “I shall hope,” said his excellency, with a malicious air of challenge, “that the prince may revive completely.”

  “I do more than hope, excellency,” was the confident, smiling answer. “I am convinced he will.”

  They stared at him, as if to plumb the exact depth of his meaning. His bold, dark eyes swept slowly over those almost hostile faces.

  “Gentlemen,” he said slowly, “I offer you here a wager of one hundred sequins that this rascal will recover, and a further hundred that his imposture will be revealed, though perhaps not before he shall have made you the dupes of it.”

  General Dolfino found that wager so offensive that he turned his back upon the speaker. But Sanzonio, his fellow adjutant, an ill-favoured, knock-kneed youngster, urged at once by his sycophancy and his jealousy of Casanova’s popularity and fame, immediately took up the challenge.

  “I will accept both those wagers,” he cried, and as a result found himself noticed for the first time since his coming to Corfu a year ago.

  Smiling, Casanova bowed to him, took out a pocket-book, and made a note of the bet. But as he left the Proveditor’s house he no longer smiled. He began to reflect that by his assumption of wisdom in the face of gullible ignorance he had given offence to many, including the Proveditor himself, upon whose favour he was dependent for the promotion that he awaited. He wondered whether he had not been imprudent in placing so heavy a strain upon his popularity. Positive, however, that time would prove him right, he was convinced that the winning of the wager would re-establish him more firmly than ever. He did not realize for all his precocious wisdom that this was precisely what would ruin him. Could they laugh at him in the end for having been mistaken they would forgive him. But that he should have the last laugh as well as the first would be more than their vanity could endure. And already he had made a mortal enemy of the Proveditor, who was of that unforgiving temper which goes with arrogance and vanity.

  The recovery of the Prince de La Rochefoucauld was a very rapid one. Casanova heard on the morrow that he was out of danger, and on the next day that he had been conveyed to the house of General Dolfino, where he was lodged in a fine suite of rooms, with servants of his own, and otherwise treated as an honoured guest. No sooner was he pronounced convalescent than all the admirals, galley-commanders, and officers of the garrison, following the example set by the Proveditor-General, went with their ladies to pay their respects to him.

  Soon Casanova heard that he was going about. He was dressed like a prince, served like a prince, and housed like a prince, and he was well supplied with money — all delightfully provided by his host, General Dolfino. Within a week it was whispered that he was making flagrant love to Madame Sagredo, and that Admiral Sagredo was beginning to display anxiety.

  Casanova ceased to attend the Proveditor’s receptions, and at last he was taxed with it one day by Madame Sagredo herself.

  “Having said what I have said of the man,” he made answer frankly, “I have neither the vileness nor the courage to contradict myself. Therefore it is better that I should not come face to face with him.”

  Meanwhile he reminded Sanzonio that he owed him a hundred sequins — the amount of the first of the two wagers.

  “You shall be paid by the loss of the second one,” Sanzonio assured him.

  “At your pleasure, sir,” was the easy answer. “You are no doubt wise to be confident. It is reported to me that he gets drunk regularly twice a day, and falls asleep and snores in public every evening at his excellency’s receptions.”

  “What of that?”

  “Oh, a princely custom, no doubt. I also gather that his conversation is condescending to the point of lewdness, and that to put you all at your ease he is so free in his habits and table-manners that were he not a prince one must pronounce him a pig.”

  “You may mock as you please, but you’ll pay in the end,” Sanzonio answered. “These things are nothing. If he were an impostor would he be awaiting the reply to the General’s communication to the French ambassador in Venice?”

  “You will see that he will contrive to disappear the day before it arrives,” laughed Casanova.

  “Of course you would say that. But do you know that the confessor who, he says, betrayed him, is in prison, and that the prince is appealing to the bishop to have him unfrocked?”

  “Shrewd of him, that,” said Casanova, and went his way.

  And then one day, going to visit Madame de Sagredo, he came face to face with his sometime hairdresser in that patrician lady’s salon. At first he scarcely knew him, so complete was the metamorphosis wrought by his great wig and splendid garments.

  He smiled at Casanova, and advancing confidently, leaning upon a ribboned cane, reproached him with not having been to visit him.

  Casanova laughed in his face.

  “You would be well advised, you rogue,” he said uncompromisingly, “to disappear before the arrival of news about you that will compel the Proveditor-General to send you to the hulks.”

  “You insult me,” said the prince, turning pale.

  “On the contrary,” said Casanova, “I give you this advice because my nature is kind and my judgement sane.”

  For answer the prince boxed his ears so soundly as to leave him half-stunned for a moment. Recovering, Casanova performed the miracle of retaining his dignity. He bowed profoundly to Madame Sagredo, and in the general silence — for there were at least a score of persons of quality present — he walked slowly out, his face very white and wicked. As the door closed behind him, he heard Admiral de Sagredo’s voice raised in anger.

  “These manners in my house, sir . . .” The rest was lost to him.

  He left the house, and for half an hour paced the esplanade in the autumn sunshine. At last he beheld his sometime servant leave Sagredo’s house to return home to the Proveditor’s, accompanied by two officers of the garrison. Casanova went after him with lengthening stride, caught him up, and hailed him, at the corner of the esplanade.

  “A moment, sir.”

  La Valeur turned. He was pale, but very haughty, depending no doubt on his companions to see that he suffered no violence. Casanova took a grandiloquent tone.

  “No man shall live,” he said, “who can boast of having struck me. I rejoice to see that you wear a sword. If you will have the goodness to follow me, you shall have an opportunity of using it. These gentlemen will no doubt be good enough to act as witnesses.”

  “Sir,” said La Valeur, in a voice that might have been steadier to match his general haughtiness. “I have no satisfaction to render you. I owe you none.”

  “Let me then become the debtor in that respect,” replied Casanova, and struck him sharply with his cane.

  The officers attempted to intervene. But Casanova with swinging cane waved them impatiently aside.

  “Sirs, this is an affair between gentlemen. The prince will no doubt require your services.”

  But the prince was reduced by now to a state of terror.

  “I take you to witness, gentlemen . . .” he was beginning, when Casanova’s cane descending a second time swept off his hat and knocked his wig awry.

  “Your highness is desired to fight, not to make speeches. But if you prefer to be caned, that is your own affair. Which shall it be?”

  La Valeur appealed in terror to his companions. The officers remained contemptuously unresponsive. He proclaimed himself a prince, and wor
e a sword, yet did not draw it when struck by a cane. His bearing now did more to convince them that he was an impostor than any formal proofs that could have been urged. Far from intervening, they drew aside. The prince’s remedy lay in his sword. If he chose to draw it, they would see that he had fair play, but until he did so they did not consider that by the code of honour they had any right to interfere after what already had occurred.

  And so it befell that La Valeur found himself entirely at the mercy of his aggressor, an aggressor who knew no mercy. The cane, smartly wielded, descended again and again with ever-increasing force. At first each blow was followed by an invitation to him to draw his sword. Then the invitations ceased, and the blows continued, until howling from pain and terror La Valeur went down under them, and lay moaning on the ground, half-stunned and smothered in blood.

  Then at last Casanova paused, perhaps from sheer weariness. He readjusted his ruffles, doffed his hat to the two officers, and passing through the crowd of spectators that had meanwhile assembled, he went to the café and called for a glass of lemonade without sugar to precipitate the bitter saliva which his rage had excited.

  He was very shortly followed by Lieutenant Minotto, the Proveditor’s adjutant, who brought him an order from his excellency to report himself immediately under arrest to Captain Foscari on board the /Bastarda/. Now the /Bastarda/ was a galley where all under arrest were chained like convicts.

  Casanova turned pale and stiffened at that command. It was an infamy on the part of General Dolfino, a vile, tyrannical abuse of power to satisfy a personal spite. The degradation of the /Bastarda/ was not for officers in the service of the Republic, and certainly not for an officer who had committed no offence against the laws of honour, whether La Valeur were a hairdresser or a prince. He quivered with rage, and I doubt if there were enough lemons in Corfu to correct his present condition. Yet after a moment’s silence he controlled himself.

  “Very well, sir,” he answered stiffly. Whereupon Minotto, who was himself ill at ease, made haste with withdraw.

  Casanova went out a moment later, but at the end of the street, instead of turning towards the esplanade he made straight for the beach. Come what might, he would not submit to being chained like a convict, with all the accompanying degradation. In his rage he could not reason beyond that point.