Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini

by Rafael Sabatini

  In common with all those confined by order of the Inquisitors, Casanova lived upon a daily allowance — graduated to the social position of the prisoner — spent for him by the gaoler in accordance with his own instructions.

  “Go and buy me the unguent,” he bade Lorenzo, “or rather — go and buy me the sulphur. I’ll mix it with butter, and so make my own unguent.”

  Lorenzo obeyed him, and thus he was provided with the sulphur with which to prepare the tinder. For steel he bethought him of the stout buckle of his belt, which would answer admirably. It but remained to obtain a flint. Again he feigned indisposition, and employed his wits to play upon the ignorance of Lorenzo. He complained of a raging toothache, and begged for some pumice-stone to soak in vinegar, which, applied to the tooth, he claimed, would immediately ease the pain.

  “But if you haven’t any pumice-stone,” he added, cunningly, “a gun-flint would do as well.”

  He knew, of course, that Lorenzo must carry flints in his pocket. If that was all the prisoner needed, his wants could soon be supplied. Lorenzo flung him three or four flints, and went out.

  That night Casanova lighted his lamp. He was vain of the achievement. To use his own words, he had created light out of darkness.

  It was a fortnight after Easter when he eventually got to work on the task of breaking through the floor, and he toiled thereafter slowly and assiduously with his improvized spontoon for only implement, covering the hole each day with his bed. Progress was at first dishearteningly slow, and the labours of the first few days were represented by a handful of grains of wood dug from the uppermost plank. Under that, when at last he had cut through it, he came upon a second plank, and under that again a third. Laboriously he cut through the three successive planks, to find himself confronted next by a layer of marble tiles, which for a moment caused him to despair. But he went on, and whilst the weeks were growing into months, he persistently dug at the cement in the interstices until he had extracted one of the marble squares. After that it was a simple matter to prize up the others, and at last he had cleared a space sufficient for the passage of his body, and laid bare yet another layer of planks. Persuaded that this formed the ceiling of the Council Chamber, he went to work with extremest care, excavating the timber of these last planks until no more remained than a mere film of wood, which half a dozen blows would smash away. He pierced a hole, and, applying his eye to it, verified with joy that his calculations were correct, and that the room immediately below was indeed the Council Chamber of the palace.

  That was on the 23rd August, and having made all other preparations, he then determined to leave his prison on the 27th. He chose this date because he knew it for the eve of the feast of St Augustine, a day on which the rooms below were most likely to be utterly untenanted. His plan was to smash away the remaining film, and lower himself by means of a rope improvised from his bedclothes. He would choose an hour of early morning, and once in the Council Chamber he did not apprehend any serious obstacle to his escape.

  Confidently then he waited, within sight now of the salvation for which he had laboured so strenuously and patiently, and then, with brutal suddenness, the thunderbolt fell from the clearest of skies.

  Precisely at noon on the 25th he heard the sound of bolts being withdrawn, a thing so unusual at such an hour that at once it filled him with terror. He had just time to drag his bed into its normal position, so that it covered the gaping hole and the debris of the excavated floor, and to fling himself into his armchair, before the apish face of Lorenzo grinned at him through the Judas-hole in the door.

  “I congratulate you, sir, upon the good news I bring you,” was the gaoler’s greeting, in accents of unusual joviality.

  For an instant Casanova’s heart seemed to stop beating. He imagined at once that Lorenzo was the bearer of an order for his release; and release so ardently desired through so many months of horror was the last thing he could now wish to see effected in this manner. For it must inevitably entail the discovery of the way of escape he had prepared, and this in itself must suffice to cancel the boon.

  Lorenzo came in. “You are to come with me,” he announced.

  “Wait until I dress myself,” said Casanova weakly.

  “That’s of no consequence,” he was answered. “You are to leave this filthy hole for a fine new chamber, lofty and airy, with two windows from which you will be able to see the half of Venice.”

  Casanova sank limply back into the depths of his chair. He felt as if he would swoon.

  “Fetch me some vinegar,” he begged faintly. “Then go tell his Excellency the Secretary that I am grateful to the Tribunal for this mercy, but that I beg their Excellencies to leave me where I am.”

  Lorenzo stared at him in amazement a moment, then flung back his head and laughed aloud.

  “Are you mad, sir?” he asked, not unreasonably. “I offer to transplant you from hell to heaven, and you refuse! Come, come! The Tribunal must be obeyed. Take my arm. I will have your things removed at once.”

  Seeing that remonstrance would be futile, and resistance more futile still, Casanova rose heavily to his feet. The only ray of light in the darkness of his despair at that moment was afforded him by Lorenzo’s command to one of the archers to take up the prisoner’s armchair, and carry it ahead of them. For this meant that the precious spontoon, concealed in the upholstery, would accompany him. If only he could have taken with him that precious hole as well, the object of so much wasted labour and vain hopes, all would have been well.

  He went, leaning on Lorenzo’s shoulder and leaving, as he says, his soul behind him in that place of horror. He was conducted to a room on the other side of the palace, certainly more airy and spacious than the kennel he had left, with a large barred window, through which he saw two other windows also barred, beyond a narrow corridor which they lighted. Through these there was a pleasant view extending to the Lido, and the air was clean and fresh. But these were matters which he scarcely noticed at the moment. He sank limply into the armchair, which the archer had set down, and, whilst Lorenzo went to see to the removal of his effects, he sat there waiting for the storm to burst.

  He tells us that in that hour he was able to attach faith to the boast of the philosopher Zeno that he had discovered the secret of suppressing pallor, blushes, laughter, and tears. Casanova sat immovable as a statue, awaiting the storm, as I have said, but with a calm that amazed even himself.

  Two of the archers entered carrying his bed, which they set down, and then went out again without a word, after which he was left alone for two whole hours or more. This delay in bringing the remainder of his effects was entirely unnatural, but not at all surprising. He knew, of course, what the removal of his bed must have revealed, and he sat there, all power of emotion numb, considering in a curiously detached and dispassionate manner what consequences must follow upon that discovery. He had no illusions on the score of those consequences. He knew that in the foundations of the ducal palace there were prisons even more horrible than the attics of the Piombi, prisons appropriately known as the Pozzi — the wells — foul, subterranean, and subaqueous dungeons, below the level of the canals, invaded by water at high tide, rat-infested /oubliettes/ to which the light of day never pierced — prisons in which men died quickly, after first going mad.

  He knew of these prisons, and knew that they were reserved for grave offenders, and for men guilty of his own offence of attempting to escape, and he saw that it must now be his fate to be flung into one of them, whence evasion would be impossible. He was irrevocably lost.

  At last Lorenzo came. He entered quickly, followed by a couple of his men, his countenance — repulsive at its best — disfigured now by anger. He stood there foaming at the mouth, raging and blaspheming horribly, what time Casanova considered him with a detachment of spirit that almost permitted him to derive an onlooker’s amusement from this crisis.

  When at last Lorenzo had sufficiently mastered his passion to become coherent ——

>   “You will,” he said, “deliver to me at once the axe and other implements with which you were breaking through the floor, and you will also give me the name of the archer who supplied you with them.”

  “I don’t know what you are talking about,” was the answer, so calm that Lorenzo flung into a fresh passion, and ordered him to be searched.

  Before that threat Casanova rose, and, with the imposing dignity of which he was master, he commanded the archers to wait whilst he stripped off his garments and flung them down.

  “Do your duty,” he bade them, “but let none of your dirty hands touch me.”

  They searched his clothes, tore open the mattress and pillow of his bed, and even the cushion of his armchair, but without success.

  “If you will not answer my questions of your own free will,” stormed the furious Lorenzo, “we have the means at hand to loosen the most stubborn tongue.”

  And then, at grips with the issue, face to face with that threat of torture, and worse to follow, Casanova’s incomparable resource rose admirably to the occasion.

  Lorenzo himself may unconsciously have pointed the way out of this overwhelming peril when he demanded the name of the archer who had supplied the prisoner with the prison-breaking tools. Casanova knew exactly how hard it must have gone with such a man had he existed and been denounced. If he escaped hanging, which was improbable, he would at least be sent to the galleys, there to toil at an oar for the remainder of his days. And the punishment that would overtake an archer guilty of assisting a State prisoner to escape would overtake Lorenzo himself no less if he were the offender.

  This reflection dictated Casanova’s answer.

  “If it is true that I have made this hole you talk about, it must have been yourself who supplied me with the means. In fact, now that I come to think of it, that is what happened.”

  Lorenzo stared at him for a moment with dilating eyes, whilst the colour receded from his face, leaving it deathly pale. In the background, behind him, the archers grinned and nudged one another.

  “From me?” spluttered at last the stupefied gaoler. “You had the means from me?” Indignation succeeding panic, the blood flowed back into his face. His eyes blazed. “You had a lamp. I found it. How did you come by that?”

  “Why, it was you who supplied it me.”

  “Bah! Lies!” roared Lorenzo. “Tell me when — where?”

  “You have forgotten, I see,” said Casanova quietly, smiling now.

  “Forgotten! You impudent scoundrel —— !”

  “A little calm, Messer Lorenzo, a little calm,” Casanova enjoined. “Bethink you now: the oil — from my salad; the sulphur — to make an unguent for a rash; the flints — to dissolve in vinegar for the toothache. Ah! I see that you remember. The other things necessary I already possessed.”

  Lorenzo understood, and understanding he grew really afraid. He had been imprudent, and culpably negligent, and if these details should come to the knowledge of the Inquisitors of State it was likely to go very hard with him. He trembled now with very real apprehension. He drove out the archers, bidding them go fetch the remainder of the prisoner’s effects, and Casanova conceived that he had Lorenzo at his mercy, and that the danger of the dungeons was less imminent.

  “But the axe, and what other tools you had?” the gaoler demanded, when they were alone. A perceptible change had come over his tone and bearing; it was as if he feared to learn that in some similarly unconscious manner he had himself purveyed the implements.

  “I had them also from you,” was the stolid answer.

  Lorenzo tore his hair, and stamped about the room in a state of frenzy. At length he made an effort to recover his calm.

  “I admit that you were right about the lamp,” he said. “But can you convince me as easily that I supplied you with the tools you required to make that hole?”

  “Assuredly. To begin with I swear to you solemnly that I received nothing from anyone but you.”

  “/Misericordia!/” Lorenzo flung up his arms in a gesture of protest to Heaven. “But how — tell me how and when I supplied you with an axe.”

  “You shall know everything — if you insist — the whole truth. But I will tell you only in the presence of the Secretary of the Inquisitors. Take me before him, if you please.”

  For a moment Lorenzo stood white and shaking before him. Then, without another word, he turned on his heel and departed, locking the door after him. And he took with him a considerable part of the load of dread that had earlier oppressed Casanova.

  For two days the gaoler sulked, and refused to open his lips when he paid his morning visit to the prisoner. But on the third day his manner had completely changed, and he stood before Casanova as a suppliant, imploring him at length to say nothing of what had passed.

  “For myself,” said Lorenzo, “I am content to believe what you have told me, and I ask you no more questions as to how you obtained the means to excavate the floor. All I now beg of you to consider is that I am a poor devil with a wife and children, and that I should be ruined if the matter came to the knowledge of the Inquisitors.”

  You conceive that it was not difficult for Casanova to yield to these intercessions. Graciously he gave the required promise, congratulating himself inwardly not only upon having escaped the imminent peril of the dungeons, where death must soon have followed, but also upon having obtained a dominion over the scoundrelly Lorenzo, which should ensure him better treatment in the future.

  These considerations compensated him in some measure for the cruelty of fate which had foiled in the eleventh hour, and by the merest chance, his project of escape. And for further comfort he had the reflection that the spontoon was still safe in his chair, and that it was now for him to begin all over again, if he desired to regain his liberty.

  How he did so, and how some months later he contrived to make good his escape from the Prison of the Piombi, is another story.

  THE NIGHT OF ESCAPE

  Patrician influence from without had procured Casanova’s removal, in August of that year, 1756, from the loathsome cell he had occupied for thirteen months in the Piombi — so called from the leaded roof immediately above those prisons which are simply the garrets of the Doge’s palace.

  That cell had been no better than a kennel seldom reached by the light of day, and so shallow that it was impossible for a man of his fine height to stand upright in it. But his present prison was comparatively spacious, and it was airy and well-lighted by a barred window, whence he could see the Lido.

  Yet he was desperately chagrined at the change, for he had almost completed his arrangements to break out of his former cell. The only ray of hope in his present despair came from the fact that the implement to which he trusted was still in his possession, safely concealed in the upholstery of the armchair that had been moved with him into his present quarters. That implement he had fashioned for himself with infinite pains out of a door-bolt some twenty inches long, which he had found discarded in a rubbish-heap in a corner of the attic where he had been allowed to take his brief daily exercise. Using as a whetstone a small slab of black marble, similarly acquired, he had shaped that bolt into a sharp, octagonal-pointed chisel or spontoon.

  It remained in his possession, but he saw no chance of using it now, for the suspicions of Lorenzo, the gaoler, were aroused, and daily a couple of archers came to sound the floors and walls. True they did not sound the ceiling, which was low and within reach. But it was obviously impossible to cut through the ceiling in such a manner as to leave the progress of the work unseen.

  Hence his despair of breaking out of a prison where he had spent over a year without trial or prospect of a trial, and where he seemed likely to spend the remainder of his days. He did not even know precisely why he had been arrested. All that Giacomo di Casanova knew was that he was accounted a disturber of the public peace. He was notoriously a libertine, a gamester, and heavily in debt; also — and this was more serious — he was accused of practising magic, as ind
eed he had done, as a means of exploiting to his own profit the credulity of simpletons of all degrees. He would have explained to the Inquisitors of State of the Most Serene Republic that the books of magic found by their apparitors in his possession — /The Clavicula of Solomon/, the /Zecor-ben/, and other kindred works — had been collected by him as curious instances of human aberrations. But the Inquisitors of State would not have believed him, for the Inquisitors were among those who took magic seriously. And, anyhow, they had never asked him to explain, but had left him as if forgotten in that abominable, verminous cell under the leads, until his patrician friend had obtained the mercy of this transfer to better quarters.

  The same influence that had obtained him his change of cell had also gained him latterly the privilege — and he esteemed it beyond all else — of procuring himself books. Desiring the works of Maffai, he bade his gaoler purchase them out of the allowance made him by the Inquisitors in accordance with the Venetian custom. This allowance was graduated to the social status of each prisoner. But, the books being costly and any monthly surplus from his monthly expenditure being usually the gaoler’s perquisite, Lorenzo was reluctant to indulge him. He mentioned that there was a prisoner above who was well equipped with books, and who, no doubt, would be glad to lend in exchange.

  Yielding to the suggestion, Casanova handed Lorenzo a copy of Peteau’s /Rationarium/, and received next morning in exchange, the first volume of Wolf. Within he found a sheet bearing in six verses a paraphrase of Seneca’s epigram, /Calamitosus est animus futuri anxius/. Immediately he perceived he had stumbled upon a means of corresponding with one who might be disposed to assist him to break prison.