Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini

by Rafael Sabatini

  He sat down at the end of a bench a little behind the court group, and the curtain rose upon the second act. Presently his highness quitted the orchestra, and went up to a box on the first tier to kiss the hand of a magnificent, bejewelled lady before leaving the theatre.

  Casanova looked up. The lady’s shoulder was towards him, and he obtained no more than a fleeting glimpse of her profile, yet something familiar about it drew his attention and piqued his curiosity. He turned to an officer sitting on his right to enquire her identity. With unconcealed surprise at Casanova’s ignorance the Würtemberger answered that she was “Madame”.

  “Madame!” said Casanova, staring. “Madame what?”

  “Why, Madame — the prince’s /maîtresse-en-titre/; that is the title by which the lady occupying that exalted position is always known. She was once a famous dancer, and for a time charmed us all from the stage. But the prince fell in love with her, and — —” The officer waved a hand towards the box. “It often happens,” he added, casually.

  “What is her name?” quoth Casanova.

  “In the theatre she was known as La Gradella. She was, I believe, a countrywoman of your own.”

  Ten years ago Casanova had known a girl of that name who danced in the theatre of San Samuele in Venice. But she had been an indifferent dancer of notorious conduct and low extraction — the daughter of a gondolier named Gradello. It was inconceivable that she should be this “Madame” of the Grand Ducal court. But even as he gazed upwards with increasing intentness the languorous beauty turned her head, fully revealing her face to him, and he recognized indeed the boatman’s daughter.

  “Since you have had the honour of being presented to the prince,” the officer was saying, “you may permit yourself the further honour of kissing Madame’s hand.”

  Despite himself, Casanova burst out laughing. The officer frowned and stiffened. Our Venetian realized the ambiguity of his laughter, and hastened to explain it.

  “I laugh, sir, because I perceive in Madame an old acquaintance.” The officer’s deepening frown warned Casanova that he had made matters worse. “A relation, I should say,” he corrected, too hastily, and could at once have bitten out his tongue.

  The officer rose, bowed, smiling now, and withdrew to reappear in the box above. Presently Casanova saw Madame turn to stare in his direction. Then, smiling languidly, she beckoned him with her fan. He was relieved that she did not utterly disown him. He went up, and as the officer withdrew, bowed over the hand she graciously extended.

  “Did you announce yourself as my cousin to his highness?” she asked him.

  “I did not, Madame.”

  “That is an omission that I shall repair,” she drawled, whilst he repressed an inclination to laugh at the lazily insolent air of this once free-and-easy ballet-girl of San Samuele. “Come and dine with me tomorrow, my cousin,” she invited him, and rose to leave.

  When he had escorted her to her carriage he took his way to the stage, for Casanova, who enjoyed the freedom of the green-rooms of Europe, had recognized one or two of his acquaintances among the performers, La Toscani, the singer, La Binetti, the famous dancer, and young Baletti, who was later to become one of the greatest mimes of the Italian Comedy. He was joyously hailed, and carried off to a gay supper-party at Baletti’s, graced by the presence of Count von Schultz, the Austrian envoy.

  Next day, Casanova, dressed with the splendour of a Versailles courtier, went to dine with the favourite. Here a setback awaited him. La Gradella had not yet seen his highness, who must meanwhile have heard from others of the relationship claimed with her by Casanova, and she expressed anxiety on the score of how he might take that little pleasantry.

  “But, my dear,” said Casanova, undismayed by the state in which he found her and the airs she gave herself, “why admit that it was a pleasantry? Why not allow the belief that we are cousins to persist?”

  “I would suffer it willingly to avoid unpleasantness,” was the answer. “But there is my mother to consider.”

  “Your mother?”

  “She lives with me. She will not hear of the relationship.”

  And then the mother entered — a shapeless woman dressed in all the colours of the rainbow, with a coiffure half a yard high surmounted by a couple of nodding green plumes. Her reception of him was so frosty as to make it obvious to Casanova that the foolish head of this boatman’s widow had been turned by her daughter’s equivocal exaltation.

  “We cannot admit relationship,” she told him, in answer to his question, “with one whose parents were comedians.”

  He was more amazed than offended. “If the theatre is so dishonouring a profession, Madam, what of your own daughter here?”

  “The question is indiscreet and insolent,” she answered, reddening under her rouge. “It was against my wishes that my daughter trod the stage.”

  “Yet but for that, you will confess, she might have trodden barefoot all her life,” he answered brutally.

  A scene might have ensued, but at that moment a couple of officers were announced, and dinner was served. Casanova was so angry and contemptuous that he could not eat. But he dissembled his temper until the elder La Gradella began to boast of the patrician state of her relations in Venice. Disgust mounted to his thin lips, his saturnine face became alight with wicked mockery.

  “And your sister?” he asked suddenly. “Is she still alive?”

  She quivered and stiffened, and her little eyes considered him malevolently. “I don’t know what sister you mean,” she answered him, since she must answer something.

  “I mean the blind beggar of the little bridge behind St Mark’s.”

  There was a deathly silence. The two officers stared at him, their eyebrows raised, and from him to La Gradella, whose bosom heaved tumultuously. Beads of perspiration broke upon the mother’s brow.

  “It is a curious jest, sir,” she answered acidly.

  “No jest at all,” he assured her. “Many a copper paolo have I dropped into her lap as I went that way in the old days.”

  “If you do not jest, sir, then you are mistaken,” she said, and Casanova bowed his head with a sardonic smile, and left the subject there, satisfied that the whole town would hear of it before nightfall.

  After that, you conceive, the meal proceeded with some constraint, and La Gradella was very chilly towards him when he took his leave. As he left the house a magnificent lackey informed him that in future he would not be admitted. He was not surprised. On his way home he came to the conclusion that Stuttgart was a very unattractive place and that he would resume his journey to Zürich on the morrow.

  At nightfall, however, he was visited at his hotel by the two officers with whom he had dined at La Gradella’s — Captain von Reuss and Captain Stoffel — accompanied by a third, whom they presented to him as Lieutenant von Diesenheim. Casanova received them stiffly, conceiving they might be come to demand satisfaction for the affront he had put upon the favourite and her mother. Far from it, however; they were come to laugh with him over the affair, which did not seem to Casanova very noble on the part of men who habitually enjoyed the favourite’s hospitality; but he excused them on the ground that no doubt all Germans were disgusting, and that one cannot expect the habits of a beast to differ from those of the herd.

  They proposed to show him some of the amusements of Stuttgart, and he yielded against his inclinations. As he says, it was written that in Stuttgart he was to commit blunder after blunder. They began — and, indeed, ended — by leading him to an evil-looking gaming-house in a back street, kept by an Italian named Peccini with the assistance of a couple of raddled daughters who, as Casanova surmised, performed the office of decoys.

  A vile supper was served on an unclean cloth, which in itself was sufficient to turn the stomach of our fastidious Venetian. He was ill at ease, and not without his suspicions both of the Peccini family and of the Würtemberg officers. Already he repented having yielded to their invitation, and on no account would h
e consent to eat. But to avoid giving offence he drank one or two small glasses of Tokay.

  Anon, the cloth being cleared, a game of faro was proposed, and half-a-dozen packs of cards were produced. Peccini took from a strong box five rouleaux, each of twenty louis, and made a bank with these. To a player of Casanova’s calibre such a game seemed puerile, but he began to punt in the hope that after an hour or so of this bagatelle, he might be permitted to depart. Within half-an-hour he had lost the fifty or sixty louis that his purse contained, and announcing himself cleaned out he rose to withdraw.

  But the officers would not hear of it. They were distressed, particularly von Reuss — a lean, sinister-looking man of thirty — at his ill-fortune, and anxious to give him the opportunity of retrieving his loss. His word, they swore, was good for any amount with them. He yielded, sat down, and lost another hundred louis on credit within half that number of minutes. One of the Peccini girls had pressed upon him another glass of Tokay, insisting that he should drink her health. Again he would have withdrawn, but again he was persuaded to remain, and invited now to make a bank himself. The very manner in which he yielded shows that he was no longer master of his wits; proves, as he afterwards claimed, the Tokay to have been drugged. It was the invariable rule of his life that in whatever company he played he never made a bank without calling for a fresh pack at every deal, himself tearing off the envelope. Yet in this obviously disreputable company he was content to use these greasy cards that had been doing duty for over an hour already; and with a boastfulness entirely foreign to him he announced, merely to startle these players for crowns, that he would make a bank of a thousand louis.

  How long the game went on he never knew. His intoxication increased until active consciousness faded out.

  Next morning when his valet Le Duc awakened him he learnt that he had been brought home dead drunk at midnight in a sedan chair. Through gaps in the fog that clouded his memory of last night’s events, he saw flushed, leering, wicked faces confronting him about a table, heard the soft slither of cards, and his own voice laughing recklessly.

  Le Duc informed him that his pockets had been picked, and that his gold snuff-box and both his watches were missing. That loss, though considerable, was trifling by comparison with another which was about to be disclosed to him. His three companions of yesternight were announced, and he received them in his dressing-gown.

  They came full of condolence. They were beyond words distressed that his initiation into play in Stuttgart should have been so exceedingly costly. But he had certainly proved himself the formidable gamester which rumour named him, and they hoped it would not inconvenience him unduly to liquidate at once the debt incurred.

  He listened with a growing sense of uneasiness.

  “What is the sum total of my debt?” he asked.

  “You lost last night, playing on your pledged word, a hundred thousand francs,” he was coolly informed by von Reuss, who showed him his note for that amount signed in a hand that he hardly recognized for his own.

  A smaller sum might have angered him. But this amount by its very enormity merely amused him. His bold, dark eyes played over that scoundrelly trio with deadly derision. Did they really know him so little, he who for fifteen years and more had been a hawk among rooks, to think that he was to be plucked in this fashion? Did they really think he would disgorge a hundred thousand francs, or any part of that sum, to thieves of their low kind? He drew himself up, tall, lithe, and virile, despite his aching head.

  “Sirs,” he answered them very coldly, “there are two ways in which you may obtain payment. One is by an appeal to the law, which I hardly think you will dare, the other is by an appeal to arms, in which case I shall be happy to pay you one at a time — not in gold, but in steel.”

  “Sir,” cried von Reuss, “this is unworthy! We deemed you a gentleman, else — —”

  “Oh no,” Casanova broke in, his brown, aquiline face infinitely mocking, “you deemed me a pigeon to be plucked by any dirty fingers. And so you lead me to an infamous gaming-den, where I am drugged, and cheated, and my pockets are picked. Between the fifty or sixty louis I had on me, and the valuable objects stolen from me, I have lost some three hundred louis. I am content to suffer that loss as the price a man must pay for his follies. But when you ask me to pay a single sou of this sum out of which you tell me that you have swindled me amongst you, why, sirs, you have knocked on the wrong door.”

  There was a moment’s pause, then all together the three gentlemen of Würtemberg broke into menaces and insults. The storm was at its height when the door opened and in came Baletti and some half-dozen players from the Grand Ducal theatre, whom Casanova had invited to breakfast.

  Still muttering threats the three officers withdrew. The players had heard enough to gather what was in the wind. At table, Casanova, who save for his headache was now serene and calm again, gave them what further enlightenment they craved. Some laughed, but Baletti thought the matter serious.

  “My dear Baletti,” laughed Casanova, “do you think I have roamed the world these years without meeting their kind before, and knowing how to deal with them? I tell you the matter is at an end.”

  “You may find yourself at fault,” Baletti answered. “Von Reuss is a friend of La Gradella’s, you know. He may induce her to exert her influence with the Grand Duke to your undoing.” Casanova became thoughtful. “If you will heed my advice,” Baletti continued, “you will not lose a moment in informing his highness of the event before they have time to tell their story.”

  “I am not sure,” said Casanova, “that I made a very good impression on his highness.”

  He was really thinking of what had occurred at La Gradella’s house, and wondering how much of this might have been reported to the Grand Duke; how far, indeed, La Gradella herself might have been responsible for what had happened.

  “No matter,” replied Baletti. “His highness has a rough sense of justice. It was these officers who led you to this gaming-house, and engaged you to gamble in spite of the prince’s edict forbidding it, which they knew, and you did not; it was whilst in their company that your pockets were picked, and you were first drugged, then swindled. The prince must give you justice, otherwise he is himself dishonoured by an offence committed by officers in his service.”

  Thus persuaded, Casanova, as soon as breakfast was done, dressed himself and set out for the Palace. He contrived without difficulty to penetrate as far as the last ante-chamber. Here a chamberlain listened deferentially to his request for an audience, and having heard his name and grounds of complaint, assured him that the Grand Duke would receive him presently.

  But whilst he waited in that ante-chamber among a few other petitioners, in swaggers Captain von Reuss to engage the chamberlain in close and intimate talk. Casanova had not the least doubt that he had been spied upon and followed, and that he himself was the object of that intimate conversation. He was still meditating when von Reuss saluted lightly, and withdrew. Casanova continued to wait, but no longer sanguine. The chamberlain presently vanished into the prince’s room. He returned soon after, and crossed to Casanova.

  “You may return home, sir,” he said. “His highness cannot see you now. But he is informed of the whole affair, and will see that justice is done you.”

  Our Venetian was very angry. But as he was not the man to break his head against obstacles, he withdrew, determined to leave Stuttgart at once.

  Instead of going straight back to “The Bear”, however, he bent his steps towards Baletti’s, to inform the actor of what had happened and to take his leave of him. Baletti kept him to dine. The actor was lodged in a house on the very walls of the city, and the window of his dining-room was some sixty or seventy feet above the old moat — now waterless — a circumstance which Casanova was to find singularly propitious later. Whilst they were at table Le Duc, who had been hunting up and down the town for his master for the last hour, brought the ominous news that an officer and two soldiers awaited Casanova
at the inn. This could only mean his arrest. The affair began to look ugly.

  “I have been a fool throughout,” Casanova confessed. “I have made enemies everywhere, and von Reuss has procured the interest of La Gradella against me.”

  Baletti determined to invoke the aid of his friend the Austrian envoy, and carried Casanova off at once to the house of von Schultz. The Count received them cordially, and was indignant when he heard what was afoot.

  “But you must do justice to his highness,” he said. “It is inconceivable that he should know the truth. Sit down, Monsieur Casanova, and write me a brief account of the affair. You may depend upon me to see that it reaches the prince’s hands tomorrow.”

  Nor did the Austrian’s kindness end there. Since Casanova could not return to his inn without being arrested, or indeed show himself abroad without incurring that same danger, von Schultz insisted that he should remain in his house, where no officer of justice might seek him without violating ambassadorial privileges. On the morrow Casanova’s memoir was placed in the Grand Duke’s hands, and three days further Casanova remained the envoy’s guest, discharging the debt as best he could by entertaining the Count with tales of his adventures.

  But on the fourth day the envoy received a letter from the Secretary of State requesting him in the name of the Grand Duke to order M. Casanova to leave his house at once, since his remaining there prevented the course of justice in an action invoked against him by three officers in the Grand Duke’s service. The letter concluded with the assurance that complete justice should be done M. Casanova.

  Von Schultz placed the letter in the hands of his guest. “I am sorry, my friend,” he said. “But you will realize that I cannot keep you here against the wishes of the sovereign.”

  Casanova understood, and with gratitude for all that the Count had already done for him he returned to his quarters at “The Bear”, where an officer and two soldiers awaited him.