To this he added an invitation, which Casanova was but too willing to accept, that for the two days remaining of the journey he should allow himself to be provided for by St Francis.
Not until they had landed at Ancona, and found themselves lodged in the lazaret with the prospect of twenty days of quarantine imposed upon all who came just then from Venice, did Casanova discover the motive he had been seeking of the friar’s spontaneous generosity. He was requesting for himself a room with a bed, table, and some chairs, agreeing to pay the hire on the expiry of the term, when Stefano sidled up to him.
“Sir,” he said, “if of your benevolence you would allow me to share your room, I should require only a truss of straw for my bed.”
Casanova agreed, and perceiving now how they might inter-aid each other he took the friar fully into his confidence, telling him that he was going to Rome, where a secretarial position awaited him, but that until he got there he would be in need of everything. He had expected acquiescence, but hardly the eager gladness with which Stefano received the news.
“Count on me,” he said. “Provided you will write some letters for me, I will see you safely as far as Rome at the expense of St Francis.”
“But why don’t you write your own letters?” wondered Casanova.
“Because I can write only my own name. True, I can write it with either hand, but what advantage is that?”
Casanova stared at him as at a portent. “You amaze me,” said he. “I thought you were a priest.”
“I’m not a priest; I’m a friar. I say Mass. Consequently I can read. St Francis, whose unworthy child I am, could not read, which is why he never said Mass. But since you can write, you shall write to the persons whose names I will give you, and I promise you we shall have enough to feast upon to the end of the quarantine.”
Here Casanova perceived the second chief reason why Stefano had befriended him — that he might act as his secretary during those twenty days in which the friar, being unable to leave the lazaret, must have gone hungry without somebody to discharge this office. Forthwith he wrote eight letters — eight because, according to the oral tradition of the order, when a Franciscan shall have knocked at seven doors and been refused he is to knock at the eighth with confidence of response. These letters, dictated by the friar, were interlarded with scraps of Latin, which he ordered Casanova to supply, and packed with foolish and unnecessary falsehoods. Thus, to the Superior of the Jesuits Stefano bade him say that he was not writing to the Capuchins because they were atheists, which was the reason why St Francis could not endure them.
“But that is nonsense,” cried Casanova. “For in the time of St Francis there were no Capuchins or friars of any kind.”
“How do you know that?” quoth Stefano.
“It’s a matter of history.”
“History!” snorted the friar. “What has history to do with religion? You’re very ignorant for a doctor. Did they teach you no better than that at Padua? Write as I tell you, and don’t argue with me.”
Casanova shrugged and wrote, persuaded that such letters would be ignored as those of a knave and a madman. But he was mistaken. They were deluged with hams and capons, sausages and eggs, fresh meat and wine, and thus those three weeks in the lazaret of Ancona were a time of plenty.
At the end of the quarantine Casanova repaired to a minorite convent, where the further funds for the journey to Rome were to be supplied to him. He received there, together with the Bishop of Martorano’s address, the sum of ten sequins. Out of these he paid for the hire of the room and furniture at the lazaret, bought himself a handsome long coat and a pair of strong shoes, and set out for Rome in Stefano’s company.
It was an eight days’ journey on foot, but not as the friar understood it. Stefano’s notion was to travel three miles a day, at which rate they would have been two months upon the road. Casanova being now sufficiently in funds to defray his travelling expenses, said frankly that this rate of travelling would not suit him, and proposed to leave the friar. But the friar would not be left.
“Carry my cloak,” said he, “and I will walk at least twice the distance daily. Thus St Francis shall defray us both.”
Our young doctor agreed, taking Stefano’s cloak, which was a mule’s load, its pockets stuffed as they were with victuals of all descriptions, sufficient for a fortnight.
Sweating and toiling along the dusty road under this burden, Casanova developed a natural curiosity.
“When travelling,” he asked, “why don’t you seek food and shelter in the convents of your order?”
Stefano looked at him owlishly, and winked.
“Because I am not a fool,” said he. “In the first place I shouldn’t be received because, being a fugitive, I have no written obedience card, such as they always insist upon seeing. I might even risk being sent to prison, for they are an evil lot of dogs. In the second place, it is never as comfortable in a convent as in the house of a benefactor.”
“Why are you a fugitive?” asked Casanova, and knew that the unintelligible, incoherent answer he received about imprisonment and escape was all compounded of falsehood.
He was growing a little weary of this harlequin of a Franciscan, and it is small wonder that in the end they quarrelled. The thing began on the following morning. Stefano led the way to a handsome house standing back from the high-road near Macerata. There was a small chapel attached to it, arguing piety on the part of the inhabitants, and acting as a beacon to the friar.
He strode boldly in, pronouncing a sonorous benediction, which brought the family clustering about him to kiss his unwashed hand. Then the mistress of the house invited him to say Mass, and hearing him consent, Casanova clutched his arm in horror.
“Have you forgotten that we have breakfasted?” he whispered.
“That’s none of your business,” growled the friar. “Be quiet.”
The Mass was said, and Casanova’s amazement and disgust were increased to perceive that Stefano was very indifferently acquainted with the ritual. But there was worse to follow. The friar went to the confessional, and summoned the family to confession. And there the evil fellow took it into his head to refuse absolution to the youngest daughter, a lovely child of thirteen, whose budding beauty was moving Casanova to tenderness.
From his earliest years he had been inordinately susceptible to the charms of the other sex, and that susceptibility, no doubt, was one of the chief factors in his eventual decision to abandon the ecclesiastical career.
Stefano scolded the child publicly, threatening her with hell-torment, until bewildered and agonized by shame she ran to shut herself up in her room.
The event threw a gloom over the repast that followed, spread expressly to regale this holy man, and it profoundly angered Casanova, the more because the victim of that loutish caprice was so sweet and lovely.
“You infamous, ignorant impostor!” he denounced the friar, to the horror and amazement of all present, his dark eyes blazing, the veins of his temples swollen. “You impudent lout! How dared you so treat that child?”
Stefano looked at him, his little eyes very evil. But he exercised sufficient self-control to render his voice meek and gentle.
“I forgive your heat, my son. I understand your feelings. They are a snare set for you by the devil. Beware of them.”
“Beware of me, rather,” roared Casanova, “for I propose to thrash you into a state of decency. On what grounds did you refuse that child absolution?”
Stefano cast his eyes to heaven in afflicted protest.
“Ignorant and heedless youth,” he answered sadly, “what are you saying? Are you bidding me betray the secret of the confessional? Are you?” His voice swelled up on a note of sudden wrath.
Casanova looked round, and everywhere met eyes that disapproved of a provocation so strange and so distressing. It was enough. He got up, and went out without another word.
A couple of hours later, as Stefano was slowly trudging along the road, Casanova surged sudde
nly out of a hedge before him.
“Ha! Ha!” laughed Stefano, full of the mirth that excess of wine engenders. “We meet again, as I expected.”
“We meet to part,” said Casanova, who had been nursing his anger.
“Why to part?” bubbled the friar.
“Because I’ll not travel further with a rogue, lest I be condemned with him to the galleys.”
Stefano’s round genial face grew sinister. He gripped his staff more firmly. “You say that to me?” he growled.
“I do. You are an unwashed scoundrel, ripe for gaol.”
“And what are you, my pretty gentleman? A needy beggar, who have been living upon me for a month.”
For answer Casanova soundly boxed the friar’s ears. The friar swung his heavy staff, and caught the young doctor a blow across the head that sent him reeling into the ditch.
When Casanova recovered consciousness it was approaching noon. He rose from the depths of the dry ditch into which he had rolled, the grasses of which had concealed him from the eyes of wayfarers, and collected his wits. His head was aching villainously, and under the lustrous chestnut hair which he wore clubbed, and in which he took great pride, he discovered a lump as large as a pigeon’s egg — the Franciscan’s parting gift.
He felt that he had not come as well out of the encounter as he intended. But he took comfort in the thought that he was well rid of an evil travelling companion, who had served his turn. After all, he had seven gold sequins in his pocket, enough to carry him with ease and dignity to his patron, the Bishop, who would place him beyond the reach of all anxiety.
The distance to Macerata was not far — a mile or so — and there he would dine well, and sleep between clean sheets, setting out refreshed upon the morrow. He picked up his hat, and stepped out whistling. Suddenly he checked in his stride. His whistling stopped. His hands were racing and fumbling through the pockets of his handsome coat. Conviction followed swiftly upon apprehension. His purse containing the seven sequins was gone.
Solemnly, terribly, and most uncanonically did the pale lips of our young doctor of canon law anathematize the scoundrelly Franciscan who had picked his pocket. Then he sat down on a mound of stones by the roadside to contemplate his case. It was desperate indeed. Save for a few pieces of silver and some copper /paoli/ in his breeches pocket, which the friar had missed, he was utterly destitute. Regretfully he thought of the good dinner and the good bed he had promised himself. And then in rebellion against fate he decided that, come what might, dinner and bed should not be forgone. To pay for them he would, if necessary, pawn his handsome coat. An hour later he was striding across the threshold of Macerata’s best inn, mustering those almost unsuspected histrionic gifts of his to explain away his lack of luggage.
“I am the Bishop of Martorano’s secretary,” he announced, “travelling to Rome. Has my servant arrived?”
“Your servant, excellency?” quoth the landlord eagerly, impressed by the tall figure and boldly handsome face, the luxuriant well-coiffed hair, and the handsome coat — a compromise between clericalism and modishness.
“I sent him ahead of me in the chaise. I needed exercise, and preferred to walk the last two miles.”
The landlord understood. The gentleman’s dusty legs and shoes were at once explained. He shook his head.
“Not here,” he was beginning. Then he checked. “Would it be a yellow chaise?” he asked.
Guessing the drift of the question, Casanova decided that the chaise must have been a yellow one. It was a common enough colour after all.
“A yellow chaise drove through the town at a great rate a half-hour ago. The postilion, excellency, was in green.”
“In green — that’s it. And he drove on, do you say? He drove on?”
The landlord admitted it, and grew terrified before Casanova’s tempestuous anger. Roundly he cursed all valets, and all postilions. Had he not told them plainly enough that this was the inn he would honour with his patronage? He could forgive the valet for misunderstanding him, the valet being not merely a Frenchman, but an idiot as well. But the postilion was an Italian, of Ancona — that is, if the inhabitants of Ancona were Italian, a fact which he began seriously to doubt. Himself he was a Venetian, he announced in passing, secretary, he repeated, to the Bishop of Martorano. Explosively, he desired the host to tell him what he was to do.
“Your excellency will pardon the suggestion that you might have fared worse. This is a comfortable house, and my beds . . .”
“I know, I know,” Casanova broke in impatiently. “Give me a room, and if those sons of dogs come back with the chaise whilst my anger endures, I’ll crack their empty skulls one against the other.”
It was a piece of acting that earned him more than he had reckoned. His loud, angry voice had drawn people from the common room, and indeed from every part of the inn. Now among the guests there was a Greek trader, distinguished by his Oriental gabardine, who had pricked up his ears when our gentleman announced himself a Venetian. The citizens of the Republic were notoriously wealthy and lavish — which was precisely why Casanova had mentioned his origin — and the Greek made wealthy, lavish gentlemen his prey.
It would be an hour or so later, when Casanova, washed and brushed, showed himself once more below, that our Greek approached him.
“I think, sir,” he ventured, “that I heard you say you are a Venetian.”
Casanova flashed him a sidelong glance, and wondered.
“I certainly said so. What you may have heard is your own affair,” he answered dryly.
But a trader with business to do is not easily disconcerted.
“I am myself a subject of the Republic,” the Greek announced, “and so in some sort your excellency’s compatriot. I am from Zante. My name is Panagiottis, and if I can serve you in the inconvenience caused you by . . .”
Under Casanova’s cold stare the trader spread his hands, and left the offer there. But, persistent of purpose, he remained and chattered amiably awhile, Casanova compelling him at first to pursue a monologue. Little by little, however, the young doctor’s manner became less frosty. Panagiottis began by dilating upon the glories of Venice, passed on to deplore at length the inconvenience of travel, and then by way of manners and customs adroitly reached his objective, the comparative merits of Italian and foreign wines. Finding his listener interested, he touched at last the very bull’s eye of the matter.
“After all,” he said, “and with all due praise to Tuscan vintages, there are wines of the Levant that stand almost unrivalled. Now I have with me some Muscadine — some of which, by the way, I could sell you cheaply — which is of rare excellence.”
“I might buy some, if it is as good as you say,” said Casanova grandly. “I know something of wine.”
The Greek rubbed his hands. “So much the better. I have some excellent Cerigo, some wine of Samos, and some Cephalonian. If you will do me the honour to dine with me you shall have an opportunity of tasting them.”
“/Fata viam inveniunt/,” said Casanova to himself. Here had fate provided him with a dinner. But it was only when the Greek had used polite insistence that Casanova yielded, gracefully condescending.
It is inconceivable that he could have had any intention of exploiting the Greek beyond this matter of dinner. What followed was entirely unpremeditated. The repast served in the Greek’s private room proved excellent, and the Cerigo was quite the best that Casanova had ever tasted.
The Greek’s conversation was naturally of his trade. He mentioned that he had acquired a considerable quantity of minerals: vitriol, cinnabar, antimony, and a hundred quintals of mercury. At the mention of mercury Casanova bethought him of an amalgam of bismuth and lead, by which that mineral can be augmented by one quarter. I have said that he was interested in chemistry. It occurred to him that if the Greek were not acquainted with this mystery here was a chance of profit.
“These minerals are for sale?” he enquired.
“Of course; but they would hardly
interest you.”
“On the contrary, I might buy some mercury.” He smiled darkly. “I do a curious trade in mercury myself,” he added.
Panagiottis became inquisitive, but Casanova was not disposed to gratify him. Address was necessary. The mere offer to sell the secret would lead to nothing. He must astonish Panagiottis by effecting the augmentation, laugh at the Greek’s amazement when manifested, and so lure him on to desire the secret for himself.
At the end of dinner Panagiottis invited him to inspect the wares displayed in an adjoining room. They made up a heterogeneous collection: flasks of Levantine wines, assorted Eastern fabrics and metal ware, minerals and dried fruits, and four large flagons containing each 10lb of mercury. Casanova purchased one of these flagons — on credit, of course, since he was without the means to pay for it — and took it to his room.
He went out to find the only druggist in Macerata, and laid out most of his slender stock of silver and copper on the purchase of two and a half pounds each of bismuth and lead. Returning to the inn, he procured himself two empty bottles, proceeded to make his amalgam, and decanted it into these.
That evening he invited Panagiottis to sup with him in his own room. Before sitting down he placed on the table the Greek’s mercury, divided into two bottles, and from these he now re-filled the original flagon, observing with secret delight the merchant’s mystification at sight of 5lb of fine mercury remaining over.
Answering Panagiottis’ insistent questions with a laugh, Casanova called the inn boy, and handing him the quarter flagon of mercury bade him go and sell it to the druggist. The boy returned with fifteen carlini, which Casanova pocketed. In itself that sum would more than suffice to pay Casanova’s score at the inn. But he aimed much further.
The Greek begged for the return of his flagon, which was worth sixty carlini, and Casanova at once restored it to him, with laughingly-expressed thanks for having allowed him so easily to earn fifteen carlini.
Then he called for supper, sat down, and talked of other things. But Panagiottis was visibly preoccupied, and he betrayed alarm when his host announced that he would be leaving early on the morrow, travelling post if necessary until he overtook his chaise and servant.
Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini Page 533