Throughout the next day Casanova sulked like a spoiled child in the cramped, stuffy confines of the coach, rarely speaking to Castelli or Angelica and, in marked contrast to his previous behaviour towards her, completely ignoring Lucrezia. When asked if anything was wrong, he complained of having a bad toothache – a malady made to order, as she commented wryly over their dinner. By the time they arrived at their next overnight stop, the medieval village of Sermonetta, his behaviour had become so embarrassing that Lucrezia decided to have the matter out with him. Suggesting they should all take a walk through the cobbled streets, she assertively took Casanova’s arm, leaving her husband to take Angelica’s, and when they were far enough away from the others Casanova’s long silence finally cracked. Without actually saying anything incriminating, both parties laid their cards on the table, and Lucrezia’s good sense and delicacy put Casanova’s childish petulance to shame. When he impetuously kissed her on the lips, Lucrezia did not resist him.
She had been worried that Casanova’s moodiness that day would make her husband suspicious, but Castelli had even more reason to be so that night. For, instead of being sunk in gloom, their travelling companion was suddenly ‘drunk with happiness’. Again, the lawyer seemed flattered rather than threatened by the young man’s crush on his wife. He even made jokes about the walk that had miraculously cured his toothache.
The desolate, marshy plain they crossed the following day failed to dent the lighthearted spirits of Lucrezia and Casanova, who, sitting opposite one another, ‘spoke to each other with our knees more than with our eyes, in this way making sure that our conversation would not be overheard’.17 Nor did the threat of being caught up in a battle between the Spanish and Austrian armies bother them. Velletri, the town where the party stopped to dine, would on 11 August that year become the scene of a Spanish victory over the Austrians. The two armies were already massing nearby, and a territorial skirmish between them that very evening was about to turn Casanova’s first attempt to seduce Lucrezia into pure farce.
It was the travellers’ last evening before they reached Rome and, convinced that Lucrezia would now acquiesce to any demands he made on her, Casanova wanted to take as much advantage of the opportunity as he could. The sleeping arrangements at their inn fitted his purposes perfectly: ‘There was one bed in the room where we ate, and another in a small adjoining closet which had no door and which could only be entered by passing through the room where we were. Naturally, the two sisters chose the closet. After they had gone to bed, the lawyer went to bed too, and I last of all; before snuffing out the candle, I put my head into the closet to wish the women goodnight. My purpose was to see on which side the wife was sleeping. I had a plan all prepared.’18 His plan – to creep into the closet the moment the lawyer fell asleep – was foiled by the rudely-fashioned wooden bed he shared with Castelli, for the planks creaked so loudly that the lawyer woke up every time Casanova moved. He had almost given up hope of getting near Lucrezia when suddenly they were all disturbed by a terrible racket. A detachment of Austrian troops had surprised the Spanish soldiers garrisoned in the town:
‘A great noise of people running up and downstairs, coming and going, fills the house. We hear gunshots, the drum, the alarm, there are calls, shouts, knocks on our door, the lawyer asks me what is happening, I answer that I have no idea and beg him to let me go back to sleep. The terrified sisters ask us in the name of God to fetch a light. The lawyer gets up in his shirt to go and look for one, and I get up too. I want to close the door again, and I shut it, but the spring jumps back in a way that I can tell it cannot be opened without a key, which I do not have.’19
One can safely presume that this was no accident and that, grabbing the opportunity, Casanova had sprung the lock on purpose. Now he groped his way into the sisters’ closet, where, on the pretext of giving them courage, he stumbled over to Lucrezia’s side of the bed in the pitch-darkness. Emboldened by her lack of resistance he threw himself on top of her, and the bed collapsed, trapping Lucrezia, Casanova and Angelica between the broken planks and the mattress.
When the lawyer came back he was furious to find himself locked out of his own room. Thoroughly annoyed by the sexual fumblings that were taking place beside her, Angelica clambered out of the broken bed and tried to open the door for him. Lucrezia begged Casanova to let go of her, and they too groped their way towards the locked door. While the lawyer went downstairs again to find a key, Casanova, repeating the game he had once played in Signora Orio’s palazzo with Angela Tosello and the Savorgnan sisters, groped his way around in the dark with his arms spread out, hoping to catch Lucrezia, and ‘to have time to finish’ what he had already begun. Instead, he accidentally caught Angelica who roughly pushed him away. When he eventually found Lucrezia they hurriedly embraced, and by the time her husband came upstairs again, this time jangling a large bunch of keys, Casanova was so excited that he ejaculated over his shirt. Lucrezia pleaded with him to get back into his bed, ‘for if her husband were to see me in the appalling state I was in, he would guess everything’.20 There was a limit to her husband’s understanding nature. By the time the lawyer finally opened the door, he found Casanova apparently half-asleep in his bed, and his wife and sister-in-law folded up in their collapsed bed in the closet. Bursting into a peal of heartfelt laughter, he demanded that Casanova come and see what had happened to them.
The excitement of the situation, the humour of it, the exhilarating danger and the sheer wonder of being desired overwhelmed Lucrezia like a narcotic. This was the first time in her life that she had ever experienced such strong sexual feelings for a man, and during the next few weeks she would risk her marriage and her reputation in order to satisfy them. The good sense, loyalty and propriety that she had previously shown now deserted her. The following morning, in the sweet grip of what Casanova termed the ‘divine monster’ of love, she watched as he behaved with shameful familiarity towards her husband when they stopped for omelettes at the famous Tor di Mezza Via inn on the outskirts of Rome, hugging and kissing him, calling him ‘papa’ and even predicting the birth of a son to him and his wife.
When the vetturino dropped Casanova off near Rome’s famous Piazza di Spagna the bittersweet pain of love must have struck Lucrezia. Her admirer had promised to call on her, but Rome was an easy place to lose a person in. The Aurelian walls, built in the third century AD , still marked the twenty-kilometre perimeter of a city which in ancient times had been home to more than two million people. Now the same area housed less than a tenth of that number, and consequently even the centre of the city had a sprawling, rural feel to it. History rubbed shoulders with modernity, the urban with the rural, the religious with the secular, and the exalted with the everyday. Though wealthy foreigners travelled across Europe to wonder at the remains of Rome’s ancient circuses, markets, aqueducts and temples, the locals regarded them as no more than conveniently placed stone-quarries. ‘One comes upon traces both of magnificence and of devastation which stagger the imagination,’ wrote Goethe. ‘What the barbarians left, the builders of modern Rome have destroyed.’21 Sheep grazed in the Coliseum, which was overgrown with brambles and ivy, the Forum was used as a cattle market, vines were trained up abandoned marble columns, fragments of temples could be found cemented into the walls of new houses, and artisans built their workshops underneath half-buried arches. The ancient Romans had been famous for their road-building skills, but now the city’s roads were unsurfaced, unswept and unlit. The long straight avenues with their plashing fountains gave way to twisting alleyways which led in turn to open spaces where exuberant baroque churches and luxurious palazzi built by generations of extravagant popes stood cheek by jowl with lowly shacks and tumble-down cowsheds. The result was a charming, unplanned hotchpotch of a city that was both relaxing and uplifting to live in.
‘Imagine a population a third of which is composed of priests, who do absolutely nothing; the peasants work little, there is no agriculture, no commerce, no manufactures,’ wrote C
harles de Brosses of Rome’s laid-back atmosphere. The city was so pleasant because of ‘the extreme freedom prevailing in it, and the civility of its inhabitants, who, if not cordial, are full of good breeding, and are more obliging and accessible in Rome than in any other part of Italy.’22 Romans were the most friendly and delightful of all Italians, and if the city itself was not as colourful as Naples, its floating population certainly made up for it. The fashionable cafes overflowed with tourists, local noblemen, pilgrims on their way to the Vatican, English lords discussing their private audiences with the Pope (as essential an ingredient of any Grand Tour of Europe as being carried over the Alps or taking a ride in one of Venice’s gondolas), effeminate castrati employed to sing in the churches, and richly-dressed clerics on the make.
Casanova now unashamedly became one of the latter. His whole life had been leading up to this one moment. Everything was in his favour: ‘Rome was the one city where a man, starting out from nothing, had often risen very high; and it was not surprising that I believed I had all the requisite qualities; my currency was an unbridled self-esteem, which inexperience forbade me to doubt.’ He had every chance of succeeding, for he was ‘well turned out, provided with enough money, with a fair amount of jewellery, with enough experience, with good letters of recommendation, perfectly free, and at an age when a man can count on good fortune, if he has a little bit of courage, and a face which disposes those whom he approaches in his favour’. To forge a career in the Vatican, a man needed political skill rather than faith, to be ‘flexible, insinuating, a great dissembler, inscrutable, conniving, often base, insincere, always seeming to know less than he does, having only one tone of voice, patient, in control of his features, as cold as ice when another in his place would burn; and if he is unfortunate enough not to have religion in his heart, he must have it in his mind, suffering in silence, if he is an honest man, the mortification of knowing that he is a hypocrite’.23
Single-mindedly pursuing his goal – a good position in the Church – within hours of his arrival in Rome Casanova went to see Father Antonio-Agostino Giorgi and talked his way into a job as secretary to Cardinal Acquaviva who, as the Protector of Spain, was one of the most powerful men in the Vatican. From now on he would receive a salary of twenty Roman scudi a month, take private French lessons from a local advocate, Signor Delacqua, and lodge in beautiful rooms on the fourth floor of the Palazzo di Spagna, the extremely grand residence of the King of Spain’s ambassadors. As soon as his future was settled he called at Lucrezia’s mother’s home near the Dominican church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva. Lucrezia scarcely recognised him. The impetuous youth who had courted her on the journey from Naples seemed to have matured within the last twenty-four hours. His simple clothes had been replaced by a smart Roman wardrobe, and his impetuous behaviour had vanished. Towards her mother, Donna Cecilia Monti, Casanova was modest and respectful, and he took a lively interest in everyone around him, including Lucrezia’s fifteen-year-old brother. When guests arrived that evening, Casanova’s witty repartee dominated the conversation. He put himself out to charm his hostess and he succeeded: when he finally left late that night, Donna Cecilia sent her son-in-law running after him to tell him that, from now on, he was to regard himself as ‘a friend of the house, free to call on them without ceremony at any time’.24
Donna Cecilia’s son-in-law may not have suspected Casanova’s motives, but Father Giorgi, his mentor in Rome, certainly did. Gossip travelled fast in the city, and by the following day Giorgi had already heard of his protege’s visit to the Minerva district; Rome was full of spies, and from now on every move the lovers made would be discreetly monitored. Giorgi warned Casanova against going to visit Donna Cecilia too often, even though hers was ‘a very respectable house frequented by people of integrity’.25 The unspoken message was that Casanova must put his career before pursuing women. He was outraged at this reining-in of his liberty. Deferring gratification went against his very nature. ‘To ensure the would-be happiness of my future life, I was to commence by becoming the executioner of that which I already had, and the enemy of my heart,’ was how he justified his defiant attitude. ‘I could only accept this logic by becoming a base object of contempt in my own eyes.’26 Still, he attempted to comply. Lucrezia had to wait two days for his next visit, and on that occasion he stayed for only an hour. Despite his meteoric professional rise he seemed sad, and the reason, Casanova told her meaningfully, was that his time was no longer his own. When Castelli joked that the real reason he looked so miserable was because he was in love with Lucrezia, Donna Cecilia told her son-in-law not to be so sure of himself. He might be blind to the sparks that were flying between the priest and her daughter, but she was not. The following morning, when Casanova sent the lawyer a poem he had written, everyone in the house with the possible exception of the recipient knew for whom it was really intended. Over the next few days Lucrezia read the lines so often that she could recite them by heart.
When Casanova absented himself from the house for some days, the unaware Castelli was dispatched to invite him to a family outing to Monte Testaccio, a small hill to the south of the city that was the scene of local festivities every October. Lucrezia knew that if she was ever to have the opportunity of being alone with Casanova it would happen then, and her excitement as they discussed the trip together was obvious. Casanova, too, was gambling on having the opportunity to seduce Lucrezia that day, and on the morning of the outing he deliberately arrived at the family’s house in a hired carrosse-coupé, a covered four-wheeled carriage that seated only two people. In case Castelli became suspicious, he insisted on taking Donna Cecilia in it on the outward journey, leaving the lawyer to take his wife, Angelica and her betrothed, Don Francesco, in his large carriage. Continuing the ruse, Casanova openly flirted with Donna Cecilia all day long, so much so that her son-in-law insisted on driving her home himself, leaving Casanova to take Lucrezia in the two-seater. As an exercise in manipulation the plan had worked perfectly. The cuckold had fallen neatly into the trap.
The trip back to the Minerva district took half an hour, and Casanova and Lucrezia did not waste a moment of it in conversation. As soon as the others drove off ahead of them, they fell into each other’s arms under cover of the dark night. The journey passed in a flash of delirious heavy petting and, perhaps, actual intercourse. The element of danger, coupled with their sexual chemistry, elevated their love-making to a different emotional level than either of them had ever experienced before. Interrupted by their return home, both parties quickly straightened their clothes and went into the house where Lucrezia somehow mustered enough sangfroid to spend the rest of the evening acting as if nothing untoward had happened.
Fearful of ruining his career prospects by seeing too much of his lover, Casanova avoided the Minerva district for the next few days. Lucrezia was not afraid to express her feelings of disappointment, as she had proved once before on the journey from Naples. It was impossible, she reprimanded him gently when he eventually called at her mother’s house four days later, that Casanova had not had time to come and see her before now. Already skilled in the art of talking his way out of trouble, her lover swore that he had only kept away because their love was so precious to him that he would rather die than have it discovered. He proposed another family outing, this time at his expense to fashionable Frascati, a town famous for its lovely gardens and private villas, where he hoped they would be able to spend more time alone.
On the following Sunday, the Feast of St Ursula, Casanova arrived at Donna Cecilia’s house at seven o’clock in the morning with two carriages: a phaeton seating four and a vis-à-vis, a light but well-upholstered carriage designed for two people to sit face to face in. As on the excursion to Testaccio, Donna Cecilia travelled with him on the outward journey. Crammed into the phaeton with her husband and the rest of her family, Lucrezia boldly declared that she would have her turn in the vis-à-vis on the way back. The fifteen-kilometre trip took two hours – there would be plenty of t
ime for love on the return journey – and once they had arrived at Frascati the party split up into small groups to explore the gardens of the Villa Ludovisi before lunch.
‘Frascati is a Paradise,’ wrote Goethe when he visited the town in 1787. ‘The town lies on the slope of a mountain, and at every turn the artist comes upon the most lovely things. The view is unlimited; you can see Rome in the distance and the sea beyond it. The hills of Tivoli to the right, and so on.’27 These beautiful vistas enchanted the rest of Lucrezia’s family, but she and Casanova only had eyes for each other. In the beautiful water gardens of the Villa Ludovisi they quickly wandered away from the others and threw themselves down on a grassy bank, overcome with a mixture of lust and emotion. This did not feel like a fleeting affair to either of them. In tears, Casanova told Lucrezia that she was the first woman he had truly loved; she was unique. He was her first love too, she confided, and he would certainly be her last. Sexual desire made her both reckless and fearless. Although she was usually terrified of snakes, when she spotted one close by she was convinced it was no danger to them, and even though her mother, husband and siblings were strolling in the vicinity she abandoned herself to Casanova there and then.
After meeting up at an inn for a fine lunch at Casanova’s expense – the adventurer always entertained over-generously, perhaps out of fear that he would be found wanting – the party set off to explore the grounds of the famous Villa Aldobrandini, a massive sixteenth-century house which was the highlight of the area. Did Lucrezia’s husband suspect nothing when his wife wandered off with their host down yet another tree-bordered walkway? She was convinced that Castelli either did not believe they were in love or made very little of their flirtation. Her mother, she suspected, knew everything but was minding her own business, while Angelica, who had been party to the collapsed bed, ‘is discreet, and besides, she has decided to pity me. She has no idea of the nature of my passion.’28
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