Returning to the house, Casanova disposed of his gold in a safe corner
of the turret chamber. Thence he descended to the garden, where a
spectacle awaited him, not in itself remarkable, but one which touched
him strangely in his present mood. Upon a bench at the edge of the
greensward Olivo was sitting beside Amalia, his arm round her waist.
Reclining at their feet were the three girls, tired out by the
afternoon’s play. Maria, the youngest, had her head in her mother’s lap,
and seemed to be asleep; Nanetta lay at full length on the grass with
her head pillowed on her arm; Teresina was leaning against her father’s
knee, and he was stroking her hair. As Casanova drew near, Teresina
greeted him, not with the look of lascivious understanding which he had
involuntarily expected, but with a frank smile of childlike confidence,
as if what had passed between them only a few hours before had been
nothing more than some trivial pastime. Olivo’s face lighted up in
friendly fashion, and Amalia nodded a cordial greeting. It was plain to
Casanova that they were receiving him as one who had just performed a
generous deed, but who would prefer, from a sense of refinement, that no
allusion should be made to the matter.
“Are you really determined to leave us tomorrow, Chevalier?” enquired
Olivo.
“Not to-morrow,” answered Casanova, “but, as I told you, this very
evening.”
Olivo would fain have renewed his protests, but Casanova shrugged,
saying in a tone of regret: “Unfortunately, my letter from Venice leaves
me no option. The summons sent to me is so honorable in every respect
that to delay my return home would be an unpardonable affront to my
distinguished patrons.” He asked his host and hostess to excuse him for
a brief space. He would go to his room, make all ready for departure,
and would then be able to enjoy the last hours of his stay undisturbed
in his dear friends’ company.
Disregarding further entreaties, he went to the turret chamber, and
first of all changed his attire, since the simpler suit must suffice
for the journey. He then packed his valise, and listened for Lorenzi’s
footsteps with an interest which grew keener from moment to moment.
Before the time was up, Lorenzi, knocking once at the door, entered,
wearing a dark blue riding-cloak. Without a word, he slipped the cloak
from his shoulders and let it fall to the floor, where it lay between
the two men, a shapeless mass of cloth. Casanova withdrew his kerchief
filled with the gold pieces from beneath the bolster, and emptied the
money on the table. He counted the coins under Lorenzi’s eyes--a process
which was soon over, for many of the gold pieces were worth several
ducats each. Putting the stipulated sum into two purses, he handed
these to Lorenzi. This left about a hundred ducats for himself. Lorenzi
stuffed the purses into his tail-pockets, and was about to leave, still
silent.
“Wait a moment, Lorenzi,” said Casanova. “Our paths in life may cross
once again. If so let us meet as friends. We have made a bargain like
many another bargain; let us cry quits.”
Casanova held out his hand. Lorenzi would not take it. He spoke for the
first time. “I cannot recall that anything was said about this in our
agreement.” Turning on his heel he left the room. “Do we stand so
strictly upon the letter, my friend?” thought Casanova. “It behooves me
all the more to see to it that I am not duped in the end.” In truth, he
had given no serious thought to this possibility. He knew from personal
experience that such men as Lorenzi have their own peculiar code of
honor, a code which cannot be written in formal propositions, but which
they can be relied upon to observe.
He packed Lorenzi’s cloak in the top of the valise. Having stowed away
upon his person the remaining gold pieces, he took a final glance round
the room which he was never likely to revisit. Then with sword and hat,
ready for the journey, he made his way to the hall, where he found
Olivo, Amalia, and the children already seated at table. At the same
instant, Marcolina entered by the garden door. The coincidence was
interpreted by Casanova as a propitious sign. She answered his
salutation with a frank inclination of the head.
Supper was now served. The conversation dragged a little at first, as if
all were oppressed by the thought of the imminent leave-taking. Amalia
seemed busied with her girls, concerned to see that they were not helped
to too much or too little. Olivo, somewhat irrelevantly, began to speak
of a trifling lawsuit he had just won against a neighboring landowner.
Next he referred to a business journey to Mantua and Cremona, which he
would shortly have to undertake. Casanova expressed the hope that ere
long he would be able to entertain his friend in Venice, a city which,
by a strange chance, Olivo had never visited. Amalia had seen the place
of wonder as a child. She could not recall the journey thither, but
could only remember having seen an old man wrapped in a scarlet cloak,
disembarking from a long black boat. He had stumbled and had fallen
prone.
“Have you never been to Venice either?” asked Casanova of Marcolina, who
was seated facing him, so that she could see over his shoulder into the
deep gloom of the garden. She shook her head. Casanova mused: “If I
could but show you the city in which I passed my youth! Had you but been
young with me!” Another thought, as foolish as both of these, crossed
his mind: “Even now, if I could but take you there with me.”
While thus thinking, at the same time, with the ease of manner peculiar
to him in moments of great excitement, he began to speak of his native
city. At first his language was cool; he used an artist’s touch, as if
painting a picture. Warming up by degrees, he entered into details of
personal history, so that of a sudden his own figure appeared in the
centre of the canvas, filling it with life. He spoke of his mother,
the celebrated actress, for whom her admirer Goldoni had written his
admirable comedy, _La Pupilla_. Next he recounted the unhappy days spent
in Dr. Gozzi’s boarding school. Then he spoke of his childish passion
for the gardener’s little daughter, who had subsequently run away with a
lackey; of his first sermon as a young abbate, after which he found in
the offertory bag, in addition to the usual collection, a number of love
letters; of his doings as a fiddler in the orchestra of the San Samueli
Theatre; of the pranks which he and his companions had played in the
alleys, taverns, dancing halls, and gaming-houses of Venice--sometimes
masked and sometimes unmasked. In telling the story of these riotous
escapades, he was careful to avoid the use of any offensive epithet. He
phrased his narrative in choice imaginative language, as if paying due
regard to the presence of the young girls, who, like their elders,
including Marcolina, listened with rapt attention. The hour grew late,
and Amalia sent her daughters to bed. They all kissed Casanova a tender
good-night, Teresina behaving exactly like her sisters. He made them
promise that they would soon come with their father and mother to visit
him in Venice. When they had gone, he spoke with less restraint, but
continued to avoid any unsuitable innuendo or display of vanity. His
audience might have imagined themselves listening to the story of a
Parsifal rather than to that of a Casanova, the dangerous seducer and
half-savage adventurer.
He told them of the fair Unknown who had travelled with him for weeks
disguised as a man in officer’s uniform, and one morning had suddenly
disappeared from his side; of the daughter of the gentleman cobbler in
Madrid who, in the intervals between their embraces, had studiously
endeavored to make a good Catholic of him; of Lia, the lovely Jewess of
Turin, who had a better seat on horseback than any princess; of Manon
Balletti, sweet and innocent, the only woman he had almost married; of
the singer whom he had hissed in Warsaw because of her bad performance,
whereupon he had had to fight a duel with her lover, General Branitzky,
and had been compelled to flee the city; of the wicked woman Charpillon,
who had made such an abject fool of him in London; of the night when he
crossed the lagoons to Murano on the way to his adored nun, the night
when he nearly lost his life in a storm; of Croce the gamester, who,
after losing a fortune at Spa, had taken a tearful farewell of Casanova
upon the high-road, and had set off on his way to St. Petersburg, just
as he was, wearing silk stockings and a coat of apple-green satin, and
carrying nothing but a walking cane.
He told of actresses, singers, dressmakers, countesses, dancers,
chambermaids; of gamblers, officers, princes, envoys, financiers,
musicians, and adventurers. So carried away was he by the rediscovered
charm of his own past, so completely did the triumph of these splendid
though irrecoverable experiences eclipse the consciousness of the
shadows that encompassed his present, that he was on the point of
telling the story of a pale but pretty girl who in a twilit church at
Mantua had confided her love troubles to him--absolutely forgetting that
this same girl, sixteen years older, now sat at the table before him
as the wife of his friend Olivo--when the maid came in to say that the
carriage was waiting. Instantly, with his incomparable talent for doing
the right thing, Casanova rose to bid adieu. He again pressed Olivo, who
was too much affected to speak, to bring wife and children to visit him
in Venice. Having embraced his friend, he approached Amalia with
intent to embrace her also, but she held out her hand and he kissed it
affectionately.
When he turned to Marcolina, she said: “You ought to write down
everything you told us this evening, Chevalier, and a great deal more,
just as you have penned the story of your flight from The Leads.”
“Do you really mean that, Marcolina?” he enquired, with the shyness of a
young author.
She smiled with gentle mockery, saying: “I fancy such a book might prove
far more entertaining than your polemic against Voltaire.”
“Very likely,” he thought. “Perhaps I may follow your advice some day.
If so, you, Marcolina, shall be the theme of the last chapter.”
This notion, and still more the thought that the last chapter was to be
lived through that very night, made his face light up so strangely that
Marcolina, who had given him her hand in farewell, drew it away
again before he could stoop to kiss it. Without betraying either
disappointment or anger, Casanova turned to depart, after signifying,
with one of those simple gestures of which he was a master, his desire
that no one, not even Olivo, should follow him.
He strode rapidly through the chestnut avenue, handed a gold piece to
the maid who had brought his valise to the carriage, took his seat and
drove away.
The sky was overcast. In the village, lamps were still burning in some
of the cottages; but by the time the carriage regained the open road,
the only light piercing the darkness was supplied by the yellow rays of
the lantern dangling from the shaft. Casanova opened the valise, took
out Lorenzi’s cloak, flung it over his shoulders, and under this cover
rapidly undressed. He packed the discarded clothing, together with shoes
and stockings, in the valise, and wrapped himself in the cloak. Then he
called to the coachman:
“Stop, we must drive back!”
The coachman turned heavily hi his seat.
“I have left some of my papers in the house. Don’t you understand? We
must drive back.”
When the coachman, a surly, thin greybeard, still hesitated, Casanova
said: “Of course I will pay you extra for your trouble. Here you are!”
He pressed a gold piece into the man’s hand.
The coachman nodded, muttered something, gave his horse a needless cut
with the whip, and turned the carriage round. When they drove back
through the village, all the houses were dark. A little farther on, the
coachman was about to turn into the by-road leading up the gentle ascent
to Olivo’s house.
“Halt!” cried Casanova. “We won’t drive any nearer, lest we should wake
them all up. Wait for me here at the corner. I shall be back in a minute
or two. If I should happen to keep you longer, you shall have a ducat
for every hour!”
The man by his nod seemed to show he understood what was afoot.
Casanova descended and made quickly past the closed door and along the
wall to the corner. Here began the path leading through the vineyards.
It still led along the wall. Having walked it twice by daylight,
Casanova had no difficulty in the dark. Half way up the hill came a
second angle in the wall. Here he had again to turn to the right, across
soft meadow-land, and in the pitchy night had to feel along the wall
until he found the garden door. At length his fingers recognized the
change from smooth stone to rough wood, and he could easily make out the
framework of the narrow door. He unlocked it, entered the garden, and
made all fast again behind him.
Across the greensward he could now discern house and tower. They seemed
incredibly far off and yet incredibly large. He stood where he was for a
while, looking around. What to other eyes would have been impenetrable
darkness, was to him no more than deep twilight. The gravel path
being painful to his bare feet, he walked upon the greensward, where,
moreover, his footfall made no sound. So light was his tread that he
felt as if soaring.
“Has my mood changed,” he thought, “since those days when, as a man of
thirty, I sought such adventures? Do I not now, as then, feel all the
ardors of desire and all the sap of youth course through my veins? Am I
not, as of old, Casanova? Being Casanova, why should I be subject, as
others are subject, to the pitiful law which is called age!”
Growing bolder, he asked himself: “Why am I creeping in disguise to
Marcolina? Is not Casanova a better man than Lorenzi, even though he be
thirty years older? Is not she the one woman who would have understood
the incomprehensible? Was it needful to commit this lesser rascality,
and to mislead another man into the commission of a greater rascality?
Should I not, with a little patience, have reached the same goal?
Lorenzi would in any case have gone to-morrow, whilst I should have
remained. Five days, three days, and she would have given herself to me,
knowing me to be Casanova.”
He stood close to the wall of the house beneath Marcolina’s window,
which was still closed. His thoughts ran on: “Is it too late? I
could come back to-morrow or the next day. Could begin the work of
seduction--in honorable fashion, so to speak. To-night would be but a
foretaste of the future. Marcolina must not learn that I have been here
to-day--or not until much later.”