In His Image: Dungeons and Divinations (1/2)
Previous chapter --- Masterpost --- Second half of this chapter
Venice, 1756. In which Giacomo Casanova has an unexpected and rather useful visitor.
Casanova, Gabriel.
Written in 1792, by the hand of Giacomo Casanova; kept separate from those manuscripts intended for publication in his memoirs; subsequently lost and recycled for the lining of shelves and the pastedowns of other volumes.
Note: This chapter is heavily based on Casanova’s own account of his escape from the Leads (i Piombi), the Venetian political prison at the top of the Doge’s palace on Piazza San Marco. The edition I have used (and whose style and choice of vocabulary I have, therefore, followed) is Arthur Machen’s English translation of 1894, which is well out of copyright everywhere. I have tried to write Casanova’s thought process and narrative style as consistently with my source material as possible, but drunk-and-confrontational!Gabriel was at first disinclined to adjust his own style of speech back from the twenty-first century to the eighteenth beyond a superficial change of language, so his words are sometimes deliberately jarring. Fortunately, Casanova tends to find eccentric manners rather entertaining.
And a disclaimer, should it be necessary: opinions on people of various nationalities/cultures/religions/genders/social classes/educational backgrounds are Casanova’s, not mine, and are usually direct quotes or close paraphrases of something he himself wrote elsewhere. Including the line about Germans. He’s actually fairly open-minded, for his time - being curious about and interested in everyone helps. And, of course, there was that one time he fell in love with and committed himself to a serious relationship with a castrato before he was quite sure that “he” was actually a “she” in disguise..."
Gabriel and Casanova are assumed to be speaking Venetian throughout wherever I have represented their dialogue in English. Like Casanova (who wrote his memoirs in French), I have only left the dialogue in the original language for literary quotes, proper names/titles, or where a character is deliberately using choice of language to make a social point - in this case, excluding the monolingual gaoler from the conversation, or mocking the high-flown language of contemporary published dedications. The Italian is spelt as per average spelling for the second half of the eighteenth century; the one instance of Venetian is spelt as per modern Venetian (so far as I can deduce it from reading a few articles written in that language!) with a little influence from eighteenth-century Italian.
I have always been a charlatan, I believe; and I have always been a philosopher. I make no apology for either. God gave us free will, curiosity, and reason: I use them to the full, and to use wisdom’s fruits to gull a fool - even such dubious fruits as numerology, necromancy, alchemy, or sorcery - is an exploit worthy of the intelligent man. Fools are happier, after all, in their superstitions.
Although most of my mercurial wealth from year to year has been earned through the deceit of other men (and what man who was ever rich can say otherwise, if he be honest?), this account, this trifling anecdote, is God’s honest truth - or that of some other Power. I am a Catholic, and will aver it on my deathbed; a man of my experience, however, knows that there are other, darker things in the world, and that it is not always easy to tell the difference. After all, it is not every man who could say which was the Virgin and which the Devil, if both came to him dressed in white. What is the difference between a poor village girl who is possessed by a demon and one who receives divine revelation? Only the word of the local holy man - that is to say, only what the girl’s father, or his enemies, can afford to pay. And in most cases, it is more than likely that the cause is scientific: that the child is only a prey to superstition and distress, unbalanced by an excess of melancholy, for which she is condemned (if she be lucky!) to a madhouse.
The story of my escape in my youth from the most notorious prison of Venice, li Piombi, [Note 1] is known well enough. Europe knows it, and tells it for me. When I was welcomed back to Venice after eighteen years, even the Inquisitors were eager to ask me how I had done it, and my published account sells as well as does any work that hints at scandal or recklessness. It is, however, a lie; at least in part. In my old age, I have enough circumspection not to publish this truth, though I feel myself compelled now to write it down.
It is true that, during the years 1755 and 1756, I passed weary months in digging a tunnel below the loose flag under my bed. The detestable tyranny that held me imprisoned had no intention of bringing me to trial, as the charges would not have stood open scrutiny. My cell was icy in the winter, sweltering in the summer and the gaoler Lorenzo was a tiresome scoundrel for whom nothing was sacred above money. I was fain to escape from that hell on earth. Indeed, I had become desperate, and driven not a little beyond reason with treading again and again the same path of thought, no respite at hand save what my own brain dinned back upon me. I thought only of forwarding this end, with the resolve to succeed, or at all events not to stop before I came to a difficulty that was insurmountable.
A man who always thinks on one subject is in danger of becoming a monomaniac, a creature less than rational in pursuing his single end. I then was in this state of mind; and it was thus that I turned to the fools’ science, with which I had gulled so many men: I turned to numerology.
Not knowing how to make use of the Bible to inform me of the moment in which I should recover my liberty, I determined to consult the divine Orlando Furioso, which I had read a hundred times, which I knew by heart, and which was my delight in li Piombi. I idolised the genius of Ariosto, and considered him a far better fortune-teller than Virgil.
With this idea I wrote a question addressed to the supposed Intelligence, in which I asked in what canto of Ariosto I should find the day of my deliverance. I then made a reversed pyramid composed of the number formed from the words of the question, and by subtracting the number nine I obtained, finally, nine. This told me that I should find my fate in the ninth canto. I followed the same method to find out the exact stanza and verse, and got seven for the stanza and one for the verse.
I took up the poem, and my heart beating as if I trusted wholly in the oracle, I opened it, turned down the leaf, and read:
Fra il fin d’ottobre, e il capo di novembre.
The precision of the line and its appropriateness to my circumstances appeared so wonderful to me, that I will not confess that I placed my faith entirely in it; but the reader will pardon me if I say that I did all in my power to make the prediction a correct one. In important schemes action is the grand requisite, and the rest must be left to fortune. The most singular circumstance is that between the end of October and the beginning of November, there is only the instant midnight, and it was just as the clock was striking midnight on October 31 that I escaped, as the reader will soon see.
That date, for which I fixed my escape, is of course the eve of All Hallows. I knew that the Grand Council assembled on that feast, and there would consequently be nobody near the Inquisitors’ Hall, which lay directly below my cell, and through which I must pass as I fled. As I related in my published account, however, it was a few short days before my intended flight that Lorenzo, anticipating my gratitude and gold, moved me from my accustomed cell to a far better and more comfortable on the opposite side of the palace. My trusty iron bar, with which I had performed so much secret labour, was happily stowed within the stuffing of my sofa, which was conveyed after me; but it was a hard blow indeed to be carried away on the eve of liberty from the toil of months.
I sat in my new cell, lost in despair. There was no help for it but that Lorenzo must, in moving my furniture after me, discover the tunnel under my bed that would have cost him his life had I escaped. At last I heard hurried steps, and I soon saw him standing before me, transformed with rage, foaming at the mouth, and blaspheming God and His saints. He began by ordering me to give him the hatchet and the tools I had used to pierce the floor, and to tell him from which of the guards I had got the tools. Without moving, and quite calmly, I told him that I did not know what he was talking about. At this reply he gave orders that I should be searched, but rising with a determined air I shook my fist at the knaves, and having taken off my clothes I said to them, “Do your duty, but let no one touch me.”
They searched my mattress, turned my bed inside out, felt the cushions of my armchair, and found nothing.
“You won’t tell me, then, where are the instruments with which you made the hole. It’s of no matter, as we shall find a way to make you speak.”
“If it be true that I have made a hole at all, I shall say that you gave me the tools, and that I have returned them to you.”
At this threat, which made his followers smile with glee, probably because he had been abusing them, he stamped his feet, tore his hair, and went out like one possessed. The guards returned and brought me all my properties, my precious books excepted. After locking up my cell he shut the two windows which gave me a little air. I thus found myself confined in a narrow space without the possibility of receiving the least breath of air from any quarter, or of relieving my mind with literature. Nevertheless, my situation did not disturb me to any great extent, as I must confess I thought I had got off cheaply. In spite of his training, Lorenzo had not thought of turning the armchair over; and thus, finding myself still possessor of the iron bar, I thanked Providence, and thought myself still at liberty to regard the bar as means by which, sooner or later, I should make my escape.
I passed a sleepless night, as much from the heat of my new cell as the change in my prospects. At daybreak Lorenzo came and brought some insufferable wine, and some water I should not have cared to drink. All the rest was of a piece; dry salad, putrid meat, and bread harder than English biscuit. He cleaned nothing, and when I asked him to open the windows he seemed not to hear me; but a guard armed with an iron bar began to sound all over my room, against the wall, on the floor, and above all under my bed. I looked on with an unmoved expression, but it did not escape my notice that the guard did not sound the ceiling. “That way,” said I to myself, “will lead me out of this place of torments.” But for any such project to succeed I should have to depend purely on chance, for all my operations would leave visible traces. The cell was quite new, and the least scratch would have attracted the notice of my keepers.
I passed a terrible day, for the heat was like that of a furnace, and I was quite unable to make any use of the food with which I had been provided. The perspiration and the lack of nourishment made me so weak that I could neither walk nor think. Next day my dinner was the same; the horrible smell of the veal the rascal brought me made me draw back from it instantly. “Have you received orders,” said I, “to kill me with hunger and heat?”
He locked the door, and went out without a word. On the third day I was treated in the same manner, and again the walls and floor were sounded. I asked for a pencil and paper to write to the secretary. Still no answer.
In despair, I ate my soup, and then soaking my bread in a little sour wine I resolved to get strength to avenge myself on Lorenzo by plunging my pike into his throat. My rage told me that I had no other course, but I grew calmer in the night, and in the morning, when the scoundrel appeared, I contented myself with saying that I would kill him as soon as I was at liberty. He only laughed at my threat, and again went out without opening his lips.
I began to think that he was acting under orders from the secretary, to whom he must have told all. I knew not what to do. I strove between patience and despair, and felt as if I were dying for want of food. At last on the fifth day, with rage in my heart and in a voice of thunder, I bade him, under the name of “hangman,” and in the presence of the archers, give me an account of my money. He answered drily that I should have it the next day. Then as he was about to go I took my bucket, and made as if I would go and empty it in the passage. Foreseeing my design, he told a guard to take it, and during the disgusting operation opened a window, which he shut as soon as the affair was done, so that in spite of my remonstrances I was left in the plague-stricken atmosphere.
A thousand times I commended myself to the mercy of God. Those Free-thinkers who say that praying is no good do not know what they are talking about; for I know by experience that, having prayed to God, I always felt myself grow stronger, which fact amply proves the usefulness of prayer, whether the renewal of strength come straight from God, or whether it comes only from the trust one has in Him.
On the day prophesied by Ariosto, the day I had looked to for my deliverance, the sky had been dark barely half an hour when Lorenzo opened the door of my cell.
“Signor Casanova, you have a guest.”
I raised myself on my elbow to greet the newcomer (such are the niceties of imprisonment, and I felt myself too ill to stand and bow). On the one hand, I could hardly work towards escape with a cellmate; on the other, I had no immediate prospect of success in any case, and with another man in the cell Lorenzo could not leave me stifled and starved.
The man was lighter in colour than an Italian, and curiously attired, but his language and accent were flawlessly Venetian, though his tongue was heavy with wine and his choice of expression unusual. “Hells. Even for this century, this place is ripe. Don’t you lads know how to crack a window?”
Lorenzo, displeased, ordered one of his followers to open a window and empty my bucket. “They’ll give me orders and an allowance for you tomorrow, signore. Until then, you’ll have to share with this man here.”
I greeted the stranger, and apologised for the state of my quarters, excusing myself with my weak health and adding with irony, “Come vedete, mi mancano per hora li mezzi per noleggiar un servitio più squisito.”
I surmised that he had heard my name before, as he looked at me more sharply upon hearing it. His reply was in the same language, spoken in the tones of a man of learning and charm, though too familiar and sarcastic to be called courteous. “Eh! e cotesto credevo un albergo di cinque stelle, pegli huomini di vera moda. Bisogna trovarti letto da l’altro lato de la Piazza, signorino.”
His eccentricity pleased me. Lorenzo, who understood as little Tuscan [Note 2] as is possible for a Venetian of poor intelligence and poorer curiosity, only knew that he was mocked. He called all the gods to witness the lie that I had fed him to keep my tunnel undiscovered: that my health forbad him from sweeping the floor, that a hint of dust in my lungs would be the death of me. “And besides, those who want good lodgings ought to know better than to make an unholy spectacle of themselves in their drink, signor.” Pious as one who never took the name of the Lord and his Mother in vain, he told me: “Shouting obscenities in the Piazza, they say - at the Evangelist, no less.”
Although I never encouraged his gossip, which was not altogether appropriate for his office, I could not help but echo, “Saint Mark?”
“Mark?” The stranger sprawled into my armchair. He was unsteady on his feet, but he held his head like one who has commanded armies, and looked on Lorenzo with the scorn he deserved. “Mark was a sanctimonious dick with no imagination. I gave him all the good stuff.”
I concluded that he had drunk more than I had calculated, or that he was unaccustomed to wine’s effects, although both were unlikely for a Venetian. Drunkenness is a vice found, in my country, only among the lowest of people. To turn the conversation, I suggested that, in matters of the divine, too much imagination could be more injurious than too little - as indeed we have daily proof, in the superstitions of the foolish and the wild delusions of many writers. Lorenzo, finding the hour late and the subject tiresome, withdrew.
When he had gone, my new cellmate tipped back his head to regard the ceiling, as if he were tired. “Giacomo Casanova. Nicely played, Dad.”
I enquired of him his own name; to which he replied that he had none, though he had once had many, among them “brother” and “son.” It was said with a bitterness that let me know my man, or so I thought: disowned by his family, perhaps turned over to the Inquisitors by his own father for the same theological misgivings that had him abusing the saints in his cups and distress. His brusqueness, then, was due to his circumstances rather than an intent to insult. To feel nothing, one would have to be as cold and impassive as a German.
“I am sorry, signore. I know how the betrayal of close friends can alter a man.”
“You know what else alters a man? Being killed by someone who called you brother, and thrown over by another. But hey - can’t blame the kid. He’s probably too busy charging about saving the world and cuddling his Self-Righteous Man to spare precious time and grace patching up a half-assed latecomer like me. Not good enough for his special resurrected-by-the-grace-of-Dad club, even if I was the one who did it for him. No, I have to be grateful to my other family, who screwed me over and oh, by the way, stabbed me in the heart too, only brought me back to clear a debt, left me a puny little shell like this and couldn’t even give me my wings back. Time travel? Really, Kali? I reach out for Wisconsin and end up in eighteenth-century Venice? With Casanova? Whose idea of a joke is that? Some know-thyself turn-about crap? Screw them. Screw the squabbling, bloody apes and the frigid flying monkeys in suits.”
Throughout this curious discourse his voice was rising, and his words addressed toward the ceiling. I would have dismissed it as the exaggerations of a man drunk and grieving, had it not been for the unexpectedly familiar expression that came over his face as he remembered my presence. It is the expression only another charlatan would know: that of a man who has let slip his carnival mask and revealed too much of what lies behind it. It was the expression of a man about to excuse his ranting with drink.
“... Huh. I’m actually drunk, aren’t I? That’s what this is?”
“There is water on the table. I am afraid I’ve no food to offer, as they have not fed me since morning.”
“How very... human.”
He smiled, though he did not seem amused, nor did he reach for the water.
Few men show themselves to best advantage their first night under the Leads. Most are confounded by the charges brought against them, or indignant at the audacity of the Law. I had become accustomed to forgiving rough manners and distraction in my new companions, and guessing at their character despite them. This man puzzled me a little, but the set of his eyes and mouth and the habits of his speech were those of one wise enough to laugh at the world and himself. He had moreover a certain charm to his features and character that provoked interest and the desire for better acquaintance - a charm that I possess myself, and which is an invaluable asset in the life of an adventurer. I reckoned that he would make at worst a tolerable companion if he were to be condemned to remain, and certainly an interesting one. Moved to fellow feeling by his poorly concealed distress, I hazarded an offer of distraction on the guess that we shared a taste in wit.
“Then we must find you a new name, of sufficient quality and quantity for these dainty lodgings. Shall I call you Signor la Moda?”
He looked at me, frowning as if he had not expected me to speak again, then down at his clothes. “I don’t think your Republic is ready for jeans and tennis shoes, kid.”
“Signore Sussiegato Sprezzatutti, then?” It was impertinent, but less so than his own speech.
He almost smirked. “If the boot fits.” He fell silent for a minute, then unexpectedly offered, “Governor of the Accademia degl’ Indifferenti Affettati.”
“Of Castel Bizzarro.”
“President of the Assemblea Generale degl’ Ovj.”
“Director of the Accademia de’ Gusti.”
“Academies we’ve covered. Capitanissimo of the Armata Navale de’ Capriccij.”
“So we have. Secretary of the Chamber of the Signor Marchese Buon Gusto.”
“Superintendent General of the Assemblea de le Priore Redicole.”
“ Publico Esibitore d’ Ogli, Balsami, e Cavedenti.”
“Second drummer boy of the Alley Behind the Orfanotrofio degl’ Angioli Scorsi.”
The words were a little too serious, and gave me pause. “Angel?”
He looked at me with the dazzling, jagged grin of a man who has just thrown his poor hand down on the table, and defies his opponent to produce a better, or to draw his sword. “Expected someone prettier?”
“Taller.”
“Kid, in my own form I was larger than your city’s lagoon. Also cleaner.”
I am convinced that most men die without ever having thought, in the proper sense of the word, not so much for want of wit or of good sense, but rather because the shock necessary to the reasoning faculty in its inception has never occurred to them to lift them out of their daily habits. These people will either believe anything they hear, if they hear it sufficient times; or call themselves rational men and protest that they believe nothing, even when offered logical proof; which amounts to the same as the first.
I am not such a man. There are in Scripture several relations of apparitions of angels and departed souls: the truth of which is indisputable, being founded upon the divine authority of the Sacred Writings; but the manner in which God wrought these resurrections, or permitted these apparitions, is hid among the secrets of His Providence. I have heard no tales of their appearance in this age that bear the ring of truth or stand the scrutiny of reason, but that is no proof that such an appearance would be impossible.
This man was an unlikely angel; but only the greatest of charlatans, in playing a role, would defy expectations rather than flattering them. Either he was out of his right mind (but I saw no signs of madness in his face); or he was as great a master of trickery as I (but I could figure no advantage to him from this lie, and it is a clever man indeed who can lie to me); or he told the truth (and the only objection to which was that it was unlikely). The best response, for all three cases, was at least to feign belief; and so I gave it him on loan.
I stood, and poured him a mug of water. “I had thought that you must be more foreign than you seem; your Tuscan and Venetian accents are both too good for you to be a native of either.”
“That’s it? Not a twitch?” He took the mug. His tone was dry, but his eyes were bright and a little mad, and they did not leave my face when I moved.
Even setting logic aside, I am an obstinate man, and if he wished to provoke me in his grief then I would not be provoked. “I confess I have never read that angels could be the worse for drink.”
“Perk of this whole mortality thing. Not nearly as much fun as it’s billed. Everything’s wobbly and I need to piss. Again. Hey, I wonder if I even have a liver.”
“Its attraction, I think, is not only that it is itself an indulgence, but that it increases the delight of every other indulgence. Good company, a well-cooked meal, the breast of a beautiful woman. It makes a man a victim of his senses.” He was occupied with scowling at his hands, and did not seem inclined to respond. At the thought of the comforts that I missed, I let the morbidity of his mood catch mine. “The followers of Mohammed, you know, forbid wine. They have instead hydromel, which they drink with water, and which is very good. Yet some will offend against their own law, and will drink wine, I think, simply because wine is forbidden. Then some excuse it as medicine. I drank with a Turk once who told me that the Grand Turk’s physician has brought it into vogue as a medicine, and it has been the cause of his fortune. He has captivated the favour of his master who is in reality constantly ill, because he is always in a state of intoxication.” I thought of the dry dust of the Holy Land, the sharp colours of Corfu and Cephallonia, the wide streets and quick tongues of Paris, and found myself suddenly close to weeping. In letting my mind wander, I had forgotten the weakness of my body and the impossibility of the stones around me.
I am not a man to stay in one place. I realised suddenly how very close I had been to freedom, to the joy of adventuring, and how distant it was now: that here, after a week of disbelief and rage, I was farther from escape than I had ever been, and here I sat as so often before, welcoming yet another stranger who was likely to be my only companion for months, or years.
“If ever I see the sky again,” I said, and I was not ashamed to hear my voice tremble, “I shall go first to Paris, where a man must say Pardon instead of Non or prepare himself for a duel, and drink of the wines of Burgundy and Gascony.”
He regarded me with a peculiar expression, then drained the mug and returned it to the table. “Hey. Shouldn’t you have escaped by now?”
His words followed so narrowly on my own thoughts that I could only look at him in confusion, before he continued, “There was that whole tunnel thing. You had an iron bar and a tunnel.”
My first thought at this explanation was that Lorenzo had published the story of the tunnel that he had found; but of course, he knew nothing of the bar. My second, and more desperate, was that the Count Fenarolo, in whom alone of my cellmates I had confided, had not kept that confidence after his return to liberty, and that my attempts were now the gossip of the Republic. Seeing my confusion, and perhaps my anger, he protested, “Hey, I read!” which explained nothing at all. I allowed carefully that I had indeed burrowed through the floor of my cell by means of an iron bar, but that I had been moved days before my intended escape, and that I was now too weak and too closely watched to make another attempt.
He drummed his fingers on the arm of my sofa, then said, “Screw this. What’s the Republic of Venice to me or I to the Republic of Venice that I should weep for her? Paris it is.”
He rose and stood with his feet planted on the stone, steady and sturdy as if he had grown from it, defying the wine. “Ceiling, wall, or floor?”
“For what?”
“For escape, of course.”
I was not sure yet that he was a man whose discretion I would trust with with my liberty, but as we had gone so far I saw no imprudence in replying, “They sound the walls and floor every day. The roof would let us out onto the Leads.”
He looked at the great flags that formed the ceiling of my cell, and snapped his fingers. There was a wet squelch; one of their number disappeared; and a large red octopus fell at my feet.
My companion grinned at me, bright and mad as before, but now with the look of a conspirator. “Call me the Angel of Temporary Alchemy.”
Now, as I recounted in my memoirs, I had in the early days of my confinement read a book, approved and gifted me by the Inquisition, called The Mystical City of Sister Mary of Jesus, of Agrada. It told the wild conceptions of a Spanish nun regarding the life of our Saviour’s holy mother, received (as she seemed in good faith and full belief to think) in divine revelation. Among other grotesque and monstrous fantasies, she held that her heroine, at the age of three, had swept and cleansed the house with the assistance of nine hundred servants, all of whom were angels whom God had placed at her disposal, under the command of the archangel San Michele, who came and went between God and herself to conduct their mutual correspondence. What must strike the judicious reader of this book is the evident belief of the more than fanatical writer that nothing is due to her invention; everything is told in good faith and with full belief. The work contains the dreams of a visionary, who, without vanity but inebriated with the idea of God, thinks to reveal only the inspirations of the Divine Spirit.
The book was published with the permission of the very holy and very horrible Inquisition. I could not recover from my astonishment when I discovered this! Far from its stirring up in my breast a holy and simple zeal of religion, it inclined me to treat all the mystical dogmas of the Faith as fabulous. With all the trappings of the divine, it contained nothing of the substance; and in calling itself truth, it rather inclined the heart to see and regard only the trappings in every mystery, and never look to the power beyond.
The fish writhed on the floor for perhaps five seconds, then it was a ceiling flag once more; but I know more than many men about professional quackery, and I know when to trust my senses. There was no solemn and superstitious cloak of religion here, nor the obfuscating hocus-pocus of the charlatan’s trade: only a simple act of power and the offer of freedom. If I had been inclined to disbelief, there lay before me the proof of a gaping hole in the ceiling, and a flag on the floor at my feet. I stared between them, then at my companion.
“You are an angel, or a powerful spirit.”
He glared at his fingers, but he seemed pleased. “Was. Can’t even hold that for more than a couple of seconds.”
I took the iron bar from its hiding place in the sofa, feeling my strength return to me in my excitement. “It is enough. Help me to climb up.”
Within an hour I had broken up the beams overhead, which luckily were half rotten, and the space was twice the size required. I got the plate of lead off in one piece. I could not do it by myself, because it was riveted. The angel came to my aid: though he complained of the weakness of his arms, he was stronger than most men, and in my weakened state I was glad for his help.
By dint of driving the bar between the gutter and the lead I succeeded in loosening it, and then, heaving at it with our shoulders, we beat it up till the opening was wide enough. On putting my head out through the hole I was distressed to see the brilliant light of the crescent moon then entering in its first quarter.
This was a piece of bad luck which must be borne patiently, and we should have to wait till midnight, when the moon would have gone to light up the Antipodes. On such a fine night as this everybody would be walking in the Piazza San Marco, and I dared not shew myself on the roof as the moonlight would have thrown a huge shadow of me on the square, and have drawn towards me all eyes, especially those of Messer-Grande and his myrmidons, and our fine scheme would have been brought to nothing by their detestable activity.
I immediately decided that we could not escape till after the moon set. I was at the mercy of Fortune, and I had to take care not to give her any advantages; and if my scheme ended in failure I should be consoled by the thought that I had not made a single mistake. The moon would set at eleven and sunrise was at six, so we had seven hours of perfect darkness at our service; and though we had a hard task, I considered that in seven hours it would be accomplished. In the mean time I prayed for the help of God, but did not ask Him to work any more miracles for me. He had sent me a great gift already, if in a rather peculiar shape, and the man who does not take action with what he is given is a fool and a sluggard.
I returned to my cell, and for two hours employed myself in cutting up sheets, coverlets, and bedding, to make ropes. In great undertakings there are certain critical points which the leader who deserves to succeed trusts to no one but himself. I took care to make the knots myself and to be assured of their strength, for a single weak knot might cost my life at least - I could not guess at what would happen if my new companion were to fall, and nor, when I asked, could he.
The shared labour of removing the lead had conquered any awe I had felt, and loosened instead my customary curiosity. For those two hours I asked him question after question; and, though he was at first wary, and would never tell me his name or speak of our Father, he told me over that time of angels, of the history of men, of the movements of the stars, of the workings of the human body. Awe was, indeed, easy to forget. He was far more a man than a creature celestial in his manner and speech, and he had himself a curiosity and a wit that resembled my own, although they were slow to awaken. If I had ever contemplated talking with an angel, I would not have thought to find him sitting cross-legged with dust in his hair, interested in the latest mathematical thought on the duplication of the cube, or mocking the hypocrisy of Jesuits with fierce and precise sallies, or smirking at tales of my own trickery and deception.
Once, I asked him what had happened to him. He was silent for a minute, and I thought he would not answer, but then he asked,
“You call yourself a philosopher, right? Well tell me, what is an angel without wings or grace?”
I considered this, then replied, “When we speak of a woman as possessing the voice or face of an angel, the comparison is appropriate rather than literal: we mean that she has a beauty in her tone or her appearance that befits the perfection of the divine. If then one were to suppose there to be anything to an angel beyond the metaphysical and the will of the Most High (of which I have never heard proof before today), it would be as an embodiment of that beauty, in disposition and purity beyond mortal aspiration.”
“No, no, and no.”
The bitterness had returned to his voice. I enquired as to his meaning.
“For the third you can judge for yourself, for the second, He... will not tell me what to do, and for the first, I have nothing metaphysical left.”
“Pardon, monsieur,” - the reader will see that, in my excitement, I was already preparing myself for the customs of Paris - “but you do. You have shown me proof that your existence surpasses the material plane.”
“Useless scraps. I can’t even snap up cash or a meal.”
“It’s something.”
“It’s window dressing. Possum, not sum.”
I suggested that he ought perhaps find a rich patron and study for a physician.
“Why a physician?”
“Because you have already knowledge to rival that of many practitioners of medicine; because you’ve charm enough to win yourself many rich patients; and because you have an inclination towards creative dishonesty, and in that profession quackery is even more effective than it is in legal practice.”
He was startled and would, I think, have laughed, had his mood been lighter; but we spoke more easily after that.
At last I had ready a hundred feet of rope, and the moon had set. A fog was coming in, which would make our climb over the roof more perilous, but which would hide us from sight. I made a parcel of my suit, my cloak, a few shirts, stockings, and handkerchiefs. Our time was come. I hung the half of the ropes by the angel’s neck on one side and my clothes on the other - he insisted, while insulting my vigour and wit, that it was his part to carry the weight - and hung the other ropes about my own neck. With our hats on and our coats off we went to the opening.
E quindi uscimmo a rimirar le stelle.
Notes.
[1]. As the Leads was mostly used for political prisoners, it’s a bit of a stretch to have Gabriel thrown in there on (essentially) a drunk and disorderly, but Venetians of standing often spent short amounts of time in there pending their trials at this point. Also, the concerns of heresy, and the fact that he appeared to be a Venetian noble but wasn’t known to anyone, would seem serious enough that the arresting officer could well have chosen to err on the side of caution. (Return.)
[2]. Strictly speaking, the Italian dialects aren’t dialects - they are all independent languages, descended by their own paths from Latin (with a few other influences here and there). What we call Italian now is actually the Tuscan dialect, or was in the fourteenth century. It came to dominate the others from a literary (and thus an international) standpoint as a result of influence of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, who argued that it deserved to be a respected written language like Latin and Provençal French (which had a strong poetic tradition at the time). Casanova, like most Italians until the mid twentieth century, spoke the dialect of his region at home and Tuscan/Italian (or, of course, French) to non-Venetians. When he is writing about his times in Venice or elsewhere in Italy he usually calls Italian “Tuscan”; when he is abroad, he usually calls it “Italian”. At this point, of course, there is no such country as “Italy”, so the name is one of convenience rather than national solidarity. (Return.)
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