CHAPTER Seven
Early on April 4, as a new day was breaking over Paris, Giustiniana sneaked out of the Hôtel de Hollande wrapped in a cloak, the hood pulled over her head. She took a horse-drawn cab to a nearby church, paid the coachman, got into a second cab, and had herself driven to yet another church. From there she took a third cab and exited the city from the eastern Porte Saint-Antoine, leaving an erratic trail behind her to confound any pursuer. At full gallop, the coachman drove her out to a Benedictine convent in the small village of Conflans, some two leagues beyond the city limits.1
The abbess, Henriette de Mérinville, was expecting Giustiniana. She took her in under the pseudonym of Mlle de la Marne and assigned her to a small room in her own private apartment. The past few weeks had been especially hard, and Giustiniana immediately felt relieved in the company of this warm, generous woman who went by the religious name of Mother Eustachia. It was so peaceful. From her window Giustiniana looked down to the valley where the Marne flowed gently into the Seine. Angelic chants rose from the chapel and drifted to her quarters. Everything around her, even the crisp cleanliness of her simple room, had a soothing effect on her frayed nerves. At last she felt safe behind the thick convent walls.
The strain had started long before the marriage preparations. When Giustiniana had left Venice in September 1758, she had been keeping a secret she had not shared with anyone—not even Andrea. She continued to hide it day after day, in solitude, concealing her growing despair behind her infectious charm. She coped in silence with violent bouts of nausea during the long trip to France. In Paris, frequent spells of drowsiness forced her to seek refuge in the privacy of her small room. Yet she threw herself into the social mêlée with as much energy as she could muster, and she made her way into La Pouplinière’s heart with the kind of recklessness that comes from sheer desperation. But she could not hide her condition indefinitely: by the end of January she was already five months pregnant. She decided to confide her secret to the one person who might spare her the sermonizing and help her find a practical way out of her trouble.
After his triumphant return from Holland, Casanova had moved out to Petite Pologne, a small community northwest of Paris, just beyond the city walls. He lived in style: he rented a large house called Cracovie en Bel Air, with two gardens, stables, several baths, a good cellar, and an excellent cook, Mme de Saint Jean, who went by the name of “La Perle.” He kept two carriages and five very fast enragés, the mettlesome horses bred in the king’s stables and known for their furious speed—one of Casanova’s greatest pleasures, he tells us in his memoirs, was “driving fast”2 through the streets of Paris.
Initially Giustiniana was somewhat dismissive of Casanova. She invited him over to the Hôtel de Hollande, but she did not encourage his advances. In fact, when she wrote to Andrea she was quite biting in her description of his general demeanor. Very quickly, though, she began to warm to him—and she stopped mentioning him in her letters. One night in late January she went to the Opera Ball wearing a black domino that covered her face completely. She cut herself loose from the rest of the company—Ambassador Erizzo, Farsetti, the Russians, her sisters—and sought out Casanova. He was thrilled by her attention, of course, and when they finally managed to be alone in a box, he smothered her with declarations of undying love. The next day he showed up for dinner at the Hôtel de Hollande, covered with snowflakes. Giustiniana was in bed writing a letter and received him in her small room. The two of them talked until dinner was called. Not feeling hungry, she stayed in bed. Casanova, smiling at the pleasant intimacy growing between them, bade her farewell, and went downstairs to sup with the rest of the family.
Two days later, a young footman came out to Cracovie en Bel Air and handed Casanova an envelope from Giustiniana. It contained a stunning letter, written in great haste, that was rambling, confused, and filled with desperation. In the interest of secrecy it was unsigned and bore no date:
You wish me to speak, to tell you the reason for my sadness. Well, then, I am ready to do so. I am putting my life, my reputation, my whole being in your hands and through you I hope to find my salvation. I beg you to assist an unhappy soul who will have no other recourse but to seek her own death if she cannot remedy her situation. Here it is, dear Casanova: I am pregnant, and I shall kill myself if I am found out. It is now five months since my weakness and someone else’s deception caused me to hide in my breast the unhappy evidence of my ignorance and carelessness. No one knows about this, and the very author of my misery has been kept in the dark. I have managed to hide my secret so far, but I will not be able to deceive the world much longer. . . . My belly will begin to show. . . . And my mother, so proud and unreasonable, what will she do with me if she learns the truth? You think like a philosopher, you are an honest man. . . . Save me if it is still possible and if you know how. My whole being, and everything I possess, will be yours if you help me. I will be so grateful. . . . If I go back to my original state my fortune is assured. I will tell you everything: La Popinière [sic] is offering me his house, he loves me and will provide for me in one way or another if only I can keep the whole thing from collapsing. Farsetti too is offering me his hand, but I am sure I can get all I want from the former provided I free myself of the burden that dishonors me. Casanova dearest, please do your best to help me find a surgeon, a doctor . . . who will lift me out of my misery by delivering me with whatever remedy and if necessary by force. . . . I do not fear pain, and as for payment, promise [the surgeon] anything you like. I will sell diamonds; he will be amply rewarded. I trust you: I have only you in the whole world. You will be my Redeemer. Ah Casanova, if only you knew how much I have wept! . . . I have never had anyone to confide in, and you are now my guardian angel. Go see some of the theater girls, ask them if they’ve ever found themselves in the need to deliver themselves the way I wish to do. . . . I didn’t have the courage to speak to you in person about this. Oh God, if only you knew what I am going through! Let’s do all we can to make me live. . . . Farewell. . . . Save me. I trust you.17
Stunned by Giustiniana’s revelation, Casanova rushed over to the Hotel de Hollande. He was surprised that she was already five months pregnant because she was “slim” and her figure was “beyond suspicion.” 3 She said she wanted to go ahead with the abortion as soon as possible. He warned her that it could endanger her life; besides, it was a crime. Giustiniana repeated that she would rather die than tell her mother the truth. “I have the poison ready,”4 she blurted out. Casanova took pity on her and agreed, against his better judgment, to take her to a midwife who might suggest a remedy. They planned to meet again at the following Opera Ball and sneak out together.
The next ball was held in mid-February, at the height of Carnival. Giustiniana and Casanova arrived separately. Both wore a black domino, but Giustiniana could easily identify Casanova because he wore a white Venetian mask with a small rose painted under his left eye. After midnight, when the crowd was at its thickest, the two slipped away, found a hackney cab, and drove back across the Seine to the Left Bank, to meet the midwife in a run-down little apartment in rue des Cordeliers, near the Church of Saint-Sulpice.
Reine Demay, a louche, unkempt woman in her thirties, let them in. Her late-night visitors in their full Carnival attire impressed her. Giustiniana in particular struck her as “a young and pretty woman, magnificently dressed, wrapped in a pelisse of grey silk lined with sable; the skin of her face was very white, her hair and eyebrows dark brown; she was neither tall nor small . . . spoke French with difficulty.” 5 She too noticed how Giustiniana was “very thin,” considering the fact that she was by then into her sixth month.
According to Casanova, Reine Demay said she would prepare a potion that was certain to induce an abortion, adding that it would cost them the considerable sum of fifty louis—half the yearly rent he paid for Cracovie en Bel Air. And if perchance it did not work, she would teach them a surefire way to kill the fetus. The conversation turned uncomfortable. Aborti
on was a serious crime, punishable by death. It occurred to Casanova that he should have been more circumspect in the matter. It was certainly not prudent to bring Giustiniana to this shady midwife in the dead of night. Suddenly he was in a hurry to leave. He left two louis on the mantel-piece. Awkwardly, he pulled out two loaded pistols he had brought with him. Was he threatening the midwife? Was he trying to reassure Giustiniana? Whatever his intention—it may be he simply pulled them out in order to get dressed—the sight of the pistols sent a shiver down Giustiniana’s spine. “Put those weapons away,” she said. “They frighten me.”6
It was after three in the morning when they stepped outside. Giustiniana complained that she was cold. They decided to drive out to Petite Pologne, warm up by the fire, and have a quick bite to eat before returning to the Opera Ball. The streets were empty. A cab took them flying across Paris. It did not take more than fifteen minutes to reach Cracovie en Bel Air. Casanova lit a fire, opened a bottle of champagne, and asked La Perle, grumpy and sleepy-eyed, to fix an omelette. The nasty aftertaste of their visit to rue des Cordeliers quickly faded, and the host was now in his most gallant mood. As they sat by the fire, talking and sipping champagne, Giustiniana’s reticence also seemed to fade, as if she wished to forget for a while the reason that had brought them together. Casanova was quick to seize the moment. “And now we have finished the bottle”—this is how he describes the scene in his memoirs—“and we rise, and half-pleadingly half-using feeble force, I drop onto the bed, holding her in my arms; but she opposes my intention, first with honey-coated words, then by firm resistance, and finally by defending herself. That ends it. The mere idea of violence revolts me.”7
Casanova drove Giustiniana back to the Opera Ball and soon lost her in the crowd. She found her friends, who asked her where she had been for so long. She waved to them mysteriously and headed for the dance floor. She danced hard until six in the morning while a thousand candles slowly burnt themselves out in the hall. The crowd gradually thinned. In the smoky predawn haze she wondered whether her movements had been sharp enough to damage the child growing inside her.
In her letter to Casanova, Giustiniana had not revealed who the father of the child was. It may have been Andrea: if she was into her sixth month when she went to visit Reine Demay, it meant the child had been conceived in the last days of August or the first days of September—in other words, during the month or so before the Wynnes’ departure from Venice. And if Andrea was the father, one must presume she decided to keep him in the dark in order to protect him. But it is just as plausible that her pregnancy was the fruit of her brief and much-regretted affair with her nameless lover. The picture of what exactly transpired during Giustiniana’s last few months in Venice is too blurred to provide a definitive answer. So blurred, in fact, that yet another possibility comes to mind: the day the child was conceived might have been so close to Giustiniana’s reconciliation with Andrea that it could well be that she herself was not entirely sure whose child it was. Whatever the truth, Giustiniana, mindful of the price her mother had had to pay for secretly having her child, was determined not to keep the baby.
Casanova had been right to think he had made a mistake in taking Giustiniana to Reine Demay. Word of their visit quickly spread in the shady underworld around the foire in Saint-Germain-des-Prés. On February 26, less than two weeks after their unpleasant meeting with the midwife, a man appeared on Monsieur de La Pouplinière’s doorstep claiming to have very damaging information on the young Englishwoman who frequented his house.
Louis de Castelbajac was an impoverished marquis and a well-known crook. Tall, gaunt, and somewhat sinister-looking, with devilish eyes and a pockmarked face, he had migrated to Paris from his estate near Toulouse and lived by extortion and larceny. Working the streets at the foire, he had picked up information about the nocturnal visit to the midwife and decided to profit by it. He teamed up with Reine Demay and called on La Pouplinière— possibly with the connivance of some of the fermier général’s embittered relatives. He told him that a young woman whom he identified as Giustiniana had gone to see Reine Demay two weeks earlier. The midwife had examined her, he said, and had found her to be in an advanced state of pregnancy. The young woman had asked for an abortion, and the midwife had refused. La Pouplinière showed Castelbajac the door, insisting that the person in question could not have been Giustiniana. On his way out, Castelbajac said he would send the midwife over to confirm the story. Sure enough, later that day, Reine Demay appeared at La Pouplinière’s and repeated what Castelbajac had said. She too was promptly dismissed.
A few days later, La Pouplinière instructed his trusted secretary Maisonneuve to pay Giustiniana a visit, just to be on the safe side. Rumors about her pregnancy had been whirling around ever since La Pouplinière had begun to court her. Several anonymous letters had surfaced, one of which—apparently penned by the duplicitous Abbé de La Coste—accused Giustiniana of having already given birth to two children in Venice, besides being pregnant with a third. La Pouplinière had expected his family to undermine Giustiniana any way they could. For that very reason he was pressing ahead with the marriage as fast as possible. But he was not about to abandon all prudence.
The day after the strange visit by Castelbajac and Reine Demay, Maisonneuve called on Giustiniana at the Hôtel de Hollande. There was nothing unusual about his appearance, as he often came by on behalf of La Pouplinière, whether on business related to the marriage or simply to drop off a gift: theater tickets, a piece of jewelry, a basket of fruit for the family, a fresh catch of fish on a Friday. This time, however, he cut the civilities to a minimum and went straight to Giustiniana’s room. “He told me of the slander being thrown at me,” she wrote to Andrea. “Laughing a little, and using as much grace as he possibly could, he asked me if I would allow him to put his hand on my belly. I was happy to oblige him, and he begged to be forgiven a thousand times even as he cursed the slanderers.”
Giustiniana said very little in her letters to Andrea about what was actually going on behind the scenes. She told him about the threats, the slanderous attacks, but she was never very specific; as she explained it, it was all part of a vague and mysterious plot set up against her by La Pouplinière’s relatives. But she did tell Andrea about the bizarre Maisonneuve episode—indeed, she told other people as well, as if she had a particular interest in advertising both the motive and the outcome of his visit. How could she possibly have been in a state of advanced pregnancy, she seemed to be implying, if La Pouplinière’s own secretary had put his hand to her belly and had pronounced it to be flat? But then it was probably a more cursory inspection than she was letting on, for even if her pregnancy was not very visible it is hard to imagine Maisonneuve taking a close look and still walking away convinced that everything was normal.
Whatever Castelbajac’s objective was—a straightforward pay-off from La Pouplinière’s relations, hush money from La Pouplinière himself, extortion money from Casanova, or perhaps all three—his nefarious scheme quickly backfired. After he and Reine Demay brought formal charges against Casanova and Giustiniana for demanding an abortion, La Pouplinière had Castelbajac followed and soon found out that he was indeed plotting with his relatives. The fermier général immediately brought a countercharge against the marquis and the midwife. Castelbajac, Demay, La Pouplinière, Casanova—all but Giustiniana—gave sworn testimony to the police during the legal proceedings in March, even as the wedding preparations moved rapidly forward. The three inquiring officers were inclined to believe that extortion was indeed the prime motive behind the initial charges brought by Castelbajac and Demay. “Threats, anonymous letters, paid agents: nothing was spared to give [La Pouplinière] the sorriest impression of me. Thank God they have failed and all their plots were uncovered,” Giustiniana assured Andrea, who was finding the situation more and more confusing.
The case against Casanova and Giustiniana, however, was not closed. As a precautionary measure, La Pouplinière instructed his new co
nfidant, the Abbé de La Coste, to write up a memorandum “on the whole Miss Wynne affair,”8 a copy of which was sent to Choiseul, the increasingly powerful minister of foreign affairs who had granted the Wynnes an extension of their stay. Gossip about Giustiniana’s pregnancy was still rife, and La Pouplinière evidently wanted to set the record straight so as not to jeopardize her application for naturalization.
The immediate threat of a trial had receded but there was little relief in sight for Giustiniana. By the end of March she was nearing the eighth month of her pregnancy. The quack brews Casanova was secretly administering to her were having no effect. And though she was still unusually thin, the daily task of hiding her condition was becoming more and more involved. She had to be alone when she dressed and undressed. She had to be careful not to raise suspicions with her secretive behavior. She had to choose with care the clothes best suited to camouflage her growing silhouette. Hardest of all was the constant, searing anxiety that her mother, who apparently was not aware of the rumor, might find out. Giustiniana became so desperate to dislodge the child inside her that she did not balk when Casanova came to her with a most outlandish proposition.
Casanova’s principal benefactress at the time was the Marquise d’Urfé, a rich Parisian lady obsessed with the occult. He had managed to convince her he had special divining powers—he could read numbers, he was in touch with fundamental forces, he knew the secrets of the cabbala. He often dined alone with the marquise and cultivated her credulousness to his material advantage. It was said that she was at least partly responsible for his lavish lifestyle in Petite Pologne. One evening, in the penumbra of Mme d’Urfé’s drawing room, he asked her whether she knew the alchemistical formula to induce an abortion. She answered that Paracelsus’s aroma philosophorum, better known to his adepts by the contraction “aroph,” was an infallible remedy.
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