Striding along the beach he came presently upon an empty boat. A mile or so out to sea a fishing vessel was lazily drifting. Casanova pushed the boat into the water, jumped in, took up the oars and rowed out to the vessel. Boarding it, and abandoning the boat, he bribed the skipper to hoist sail and take him away, anywhere. The result was that they landed him at midnight on the island of Casopo, twenty miles from Corfu.
It may be that his aim was to remain there for a few weeks, until he judged that the imposture of La Valeur should have been discovered, or it may be that he had no plan at all, and simply abandoned himself to the winds of chance, as was his custom when in difficulties. He is not clear on this point, and as for the ridiculous story of how he spent the time on Casopo, I do not believe a word of it. The real truth of the matter, as is established from another source, is that he spent the fortnight during which his visit lasted as the guest of the Greek priest, who was in a way the governor of that romantic island.
And then one day at the end of that fortnight, an armed sloop dropped anchor in the bay, that was overlooked by the priest’s house; a boat put off, and brought Lieutenant Minotto ashore. Casanova went to meet the visitor.
“I suppose you have come for me?” he said.
“That is so,” the lieutenant replied, “and I am glad to find you looking so fresh and well.”
“What exactly is your business with me?”
“In the first place to ask for your sword. You are under arrest as a deserter.”
“That is serious,” said Casanova. “So serious that I might decide to defend myself, yielding only to force.”
Minotto smiled in deprecation. “That would be foolish on two counts. In the first place, I have ample force with me to compel you. I refrained from bringing my men ashore, because I preferred to come as your friend. In the second place, you have really nothing to fear. Your arrest is a formal matter. General Dolfino will wish to avoid the publicity which proceedings against you would entail, as in view of all that has happened he would cover himself with ridicule.”
“What has happened?”
“Four days ago a frigate came from Venice with letters from the French Ambassador, as a consequence of which the prince, your hairdresser, was promptly placed under arrest on board a galley bound for home.”
Casanova was surprised.
“How came the rascal to wait for that to happen?”
“He couldn’t help himself. He was still in hospital as a consequence of the thrashing you gave him. You broke one of his arms. The General, of course, has divulged nothing of what was in the Ambassador’s dispatches. But Corfu has guessed the truth, and you will find yourself more esteemed than ever as the only man who had the wit not to be deceived by that impostor. So that in returning with me you have nothing to fear.”
Thus Casanova was persuaded, and the more readily since he was practically without means. His funds in Maroli’s faro bank amounted at the moment to some three thousand sequins. But in the haste of his departure he had neglected to obtain supplies from him, and of course from Casopo there had been no means of communicating with his partner. In this connection a desolating shock awaited him. One of the first pieces of news Minotto gave him of events at Corfu since his departure was that there had been a horrible fracas one evening at the faro table, one of the punters who had been losing heavily accusing Major Maroli of dishonest play, and threatening to bring the matter to the attention of the Proveditor-General. As a consequence the major had decamped from Corfu next day, leaving a mass of unpaid debts behind him.
The news was within an ace of turning Casanova physically sick. At a blow he had lost three thousand sequins, which in itself was a considerable fortune, and he could blame only himself for having left his funds so trustingly in the bank of a professional gamester. His resilient nature, however, did not long permit him to remain downcast. There was at least the wager of two hundred sequins which Sanzonio had lost to him; in his clever hands that sum should become the seed of a fresh fortune in which he would have no partners.
Immediately on landing he was conducted by Minotto to the Proveditor’s residence. General Dolfino received him with hostile coolness, being rendered the more resentful by the fact that he dare not now openly punish Casanova without overwhelming himself with a ridicule even greater than that under which he lay already on the score of the false prince.
“So,” the General welcomed him, “to the offence of disobedience you have now added the crime of desertion.”
“The circumstances, I respectfully submit to your excellency, are extenuating.”
“No circumstances, sir, can extenuate insubordination. I should be within my rights in sending you to the galleys. If out of several considerations I decline to do so, at least I cannot permit you to remain in Corfu. You disobeyed me once. You certainly shall have no chance of disobeying me again.”
“I do not think, excellency,” said Casanova coolly, feeling himself entirely master of the situation, “that you show a proper gratitude. In what case would you be now if I had obeyed you, if I had submitted to the unjust punishment to which through a misapprehension you condemned me?”
“Do you presume to question me?”
His excellency’s face turned purple.
“Hardly. But I venture to hope that when your excellency shall have considered further, you will decide to reward me with the lieutenancy that was promised me some time ago.”
“The lieutenancy?” said the General, and he laughed maliciously. “It fell vacant in your absence, and has been conferred upon your fellow ensign, Sanzonio, who understands better than yourself the duties of an officer. He left yesterday for Constantinople on an important mission.”
That was a blow that struck Casanova’s confidence dead. It was not so much the loss of the lieutenancy as that Sanzonio had gone without paying him the two hundred sequins — all that had stood between himself and destitution. Looking into the evilly smiling old eyes of Dolfino, Casanova knew that the General had deliberately done this vindictively to rob him. Instinctively, he realized too that the fracas which had resulted in Maroli’s flight was also of his excellency’s contriving to the same purpose, and almost his excellency’s next words confirmed it.
“Then there is this unsavoury business of a faro bank which you ran in partnership with Major Maroli.” Dolfino leered. “It has transpired that all was not conducted honestly at that bank, and Maroli has confirmed the charge by decamping.”
Casanova stiffened: his eyes blazed.
“If any man dare to impute dishonest practices to me I’ll ram the imputation down his dirty throat with my sword.”
“Well, well,” said his excellency coolly, “that is no affair of mine. But it is my affair to see discipline observed here, and one so careless of it as yourself cannot remain. You will therefore return to Venice at once, and report yourself there to the Secretary for War. In my own opinion,” he ended contemptuously, “the profession of arms is little suited to a man of your character.”
Casanova looked him steadily in the eye for a long moment. Then with a wicked smile, “Of course, your excellency,” he said, “is an unerring judge of character and of men, even of princes, as I shall assure them in Venice when I get there.”
It was all the vengeance that it lay within his power to take for so much harm suffered. But seeing the general white and trembling, mouthing and snarling like an infuriated but infirm old mountain cat, he departed satisfied for the moment.
He returned to Venice, a simple ensign, as he had left it nine months earlier, as a result of knowing some men too well and others not well enough. He was forced for the second time to sell his jewels to defray the expenses of the journey, and finding himself without funds soon after his arrival he was obliged to sell his commission for rather less than he had paid for it.
Thus ended his priesthood of Mars.
THE ORACLE
In April 1746, Casanova’s declining fortunes reached their nadir. After months of vic
issitudes, in which he had snatched a precarious livelihood by lowly and often questionable means, he found himself reduced to scraping a fiddle in the orchestra of San Samuele. The fortuity which rescued him justified him of his unfaltering fatalism.
The orchestra of which he was an incompetent member — for his talents, great and varied as they were, did not lean towards fiddling — was engaged for a ball at the patrician house of Soranzo. He was departing thence alone an hour before daybreak, and chanced to descend the staircase in the wake of a gentleman wearing the scarlet robes and full-bottomed wig of the senator. A letter fluttered from the great man’s pocket. Casanova picked it up, and quickening his steps, restored it to its owner as he was on the point of entering a magnificent gondola, manned by liveried gondoliers.
The senator, a tall man of a noble, handsome countenance, turned kindly eyes upon the fiddler in his rusty, threadbare garments, thanked him as one thanks an equal, and having asked him where he lived, proposed to carry him home.
Gratefully Casanova stepped on board, and took the place to which the senator invited him on the cabin seat. Swiftly the swan-like boat glided from the radiance of the illuminated palace into the deep shadows of the Canal Regio. Awhile they sat in a silence broken only by the creak and swish of the great oars and the gurgle of the water at the prow. Then the patrician, stirring in the gloom, complained of a numbness in his left arm, and begged his companion to rub it. Scarcely had Casanova begun to comply when the senator hurtled heavily against him.
“The numbness,” he said, articulating indistinctly, “is spreading to the whole of my left side. Oh, my God!” he groaned. “I think I am dying.”
Alarmed, Casanova sprang up, swept aside the leather curtains, and snatched the lantern from the poop. Holding it aloft, he beheld the patrician huddled on the seat, ghastly of countenance, with twisted mouth and moribund eyes.
In the course of his considerable studies Casanova had dabbled in medicine, and had learnt enough to recognize here a case of apoplectic seizure.
He shouted to the gondoliers to land him and wait. He leapt ashore and almost dragged a reluctant surgeon from his bed, and drove him out into the chill air of dawn in night-cap, dressing-gown and slippers to the waiting gondola.
There he ordered him at once to bleed the stricken senator, whilst tearing his own shirt into strips to provide bandages. That done, he commanded the gondoliers to make for home at the double. Soon they skimmed alongside of a handsome palace at Santa Marina, and servants were roused to carry their almost lifeless master to bed, Casanova following and superintending, so authoritative in manner that none dared question his right.
The famous and popular Senator Bragadino, a bachelor, enjoying a reputation for wit and learning and a leaning towards abstract science, had no family. He lived alone with a retinue of servants becoming his rank, and these servants no doubt welcomed the orders of one who obviously assumed responsibility in this crisis.
The senator’s own physician, Doctor Terro, when fetched, prescribed at once a further blood-letting, thus approving what Casanova had already done. When Terro departed, Casanova remained on watch by the bedside, and there he was found an hour later by two patrician gentlemen, named Dandolo and Barbaro, who were Bragadino’s closest friends, and who had been hurriedly summoned.
Although no more aware than the servants of Casanova’s identity, and although his presence surprised them, and his appearance, rendered shabbier than ever by the sacrifice of his shirt, was hardly prepossessing, they hesitated to question him, so imposing was his manner, so bold and masterful his glance.
At noon he dined in the palace with the two patricians, and few were the words exchanged. But towards evening they came to him, and Messer Dandolo spoke for both.
“As no doubt, sir, you will have affairs of your own,” he said, “and as we shall spend the night in the patient’s room, you may depart when you please.”
Casanova considered them gravely. Fate had thrust him into this strange position, and he would not have Fate thwarted in her intentions concerning him, whatever they might be.
“Sirs,” he answered them, “I shall spend the night by the bedside. For if I depart the patient will die; and I know that he will live so long as I am here.”
They stared at him, and then at each other, in utter stupefaction; but there was no further talk of his departure. Later, he was to learn how calculated was his sententiousness to impress these two gentlemen who with Bragadino composed a trinity secretly devoted to the study of the occult.
That evening Doctor Terro prescribed applications of mercury for the almost lifeless senator stretched on that magnificent canopied bed. The immediate result of this violent treatment was a reanimation of the patient, which greatly delighted the two friends, whilst vaguely alarming Casanova. His uneasiness increased his watchfulness. By midnight, finding Bragadino all on fire, so exhausted that he scarcely breathed, his staring eyes dull and lack lustre, he roused the slumbering friends.
“Unless relieved of these infernal plasters he will die,” he pronounced, and at once uncovered the patient’s breast, removed the plasters, and bathed him gently with warm water. Relief followed immediately, Bragadino’s breathing became regular and free, and within a few minutes he had fallen into a peaceful sleep.
The delight of the patricians was as great as the anger of Terro next morning. Storming that this audacious interference with his treatment was enough to kill the senator, he demanded to know who was guilty of it. It was Bragadino himself who answered the angry question.
“Doctor,” he said gently, “I was delivered from your plasters, which were suffocating me, by a greater physician than yourself,” and he indicated Casanova, who stood by.
“In that case,” said Terro, “I had better relinquish my place to him,” and on that he departed livid with mortification.
Thus you behold Casanova physician to one of the most illustrious members of the Venetian Senate. His self-assurance did not suffer the responsibility to alarm him. He assumed it readily, assuring the patient that now that the best season of the year was approaching careful dieting was the only medicine he required. That he was right was proved by the rapidity of Bragadino’s recovery.
One day a cousin of the senator’s who came to see him professed amazement that Bragadino should have chosen a fiddler for a doctor. Bragadino, who had already exchanged his bed for an armchair, looked gravely at his cousin.
“If he is a fiddler, as you say, he is a fiddler who knows more medicine than all the physicians in Venice: a fiddler who has twice saved my life by the promptitude and soundness of his judgement — once in the gondola, when he had me bled, and again here when he relieved me of Terro’s plasters, which were killing me. Tell that in Venice, cousin.”
But when the cousin had departed, Bragadino turned to Casanova and invited him to explain himself. Briefly Casanova sketched his story to the senator and the two patricians, who were present. How at the age of sixteen he had taken a doctor’s degree in canon law; how it had been intended that he should enter the Church; how, discovering in himself no vocation, he had acquired a commission in the army of the Republic; how, fortune abandoning him, he had sold his commission and gone from bad to worse, until for all his talents and his learning he was obliged to scrape a fiddle for a livelihood. Of his humble origin — that he was the son of an actor and a cobbler’s daughter — he said no word, and from his appearance now none would have suspected it. The fiddler’s rags had given place to a handsome satin suit, provided him by order of his illustrious patient, which did justice to his fine, tall figure. His luxuriant chestnut hair was becomingly coiffed and clubbed, and his swarthy aquiline young face was of an ultra-patrician haughtiness. But his physical attractions were overshadowed by his mental gifts, and his ability in parading them. He was beginning to wonder how this rather extraordinary adventure would end for him when at last Chance pointed out the way. It is not every man would have been as quick to perceive the pointing finger
, or to follow the road it indicated.
“Do you know,” said Dandolo, one day, “that for so young a man you are too learned. There is something unnatural in your knowledge.”
Barbaro nodded his head approvingly. But Bragadino went further; he smiled the smile of the man who knows.
“I have long since reached a conclusion,” he announced. “I am convinced that he owes it to supernatural agency.” He turned to Casanova. “Will you not be frank with us, my friend?”
I have said that Bragadino dabbled in abstract sciences. Yet this was the first hint of it that Casanova had received. The discovery coming so abruptly, conveyed in that direct question, left him for a moment speechless.
“You hesitate to answer me, I see,” said Bragadino.
Upon the instant the young adventurer took his resolve.
“Why should I, after all?” he said, and without further reflection embarked upon the most flagrant imposture he had ever perpetrated. “I possess the secret of a numerical calculation by which I can learn whatever I desire to know!”
“A numerical calculation?” echoed Bragadino. He seemed disappointed.
Casanova elaborated, inventing briskly. “By means of a question, which I write down and convert into numbers, I obtain, similarly in numbers, an answer which gives me whatever information I seek, information which no one in the world could supply me.”
“That,” said Bragadino, further revealing his vulnerability, “must be /The Clavicula of Solomon/, vulgarly termed the Cabala.”
“Where did you learn this science?” asked Barbaro.
“From an old hermit who lived on Mount Carpegna,” Casanova lied glibly.
“Ah!” cried Bragadino, after the fashion of one who suddenly sees light. “The hermit taught you the mode of calculation, but since simple numbers of themselves cannot reason, it is clear that he attached to you without your knowledge an invisible intelligence to be your real guide.”
Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini Page 536
