by Stefan Zweig
Here is his own description: “A man of a certain age, to whom luck has become a stranger, and towards whom women have grown cold. A bird without wing, a man without virility, a lover without a mistress, a gambler without money to stake, a tired frame without tension or beauty.” No longer does he sound triumphal peals, or proclaim the exclusive wisdom of enjoyment; for the first time the dangerous word “renunciation” finds expression in his philosophy. “The days when I made women in love with me are over; I must either renounce them, or else buy their favors.” Renunciation, the most incredible thought for a Casanova, has become terribly real to him. He cannot buy women without money; yet it has always been women who have kept him in funds. The wonderful circulation has come to an end, the game is finished, and life has become a serious matter for the master of all adventurers. That is why the aging Casanova, poor Casanova, from being a man of pleasure becomes a parasite, from being a man interested in the world for its own sake becomes a spy, from being a gambler becomes a cheat and a beggar; that is why the boon companion becomes a forlorn scribbler who is always quarrelling with his housemates.
A distressing spectacle! Casanova lays down his arms. The veteran of countless love battles grows cautious and modest. Quietly and sadly the great “commediante in fortuna” retires from the stage where he has had such splendid successes. He doffs his fine clothes as “no longer suitable to my position”; takes off his ring and his diamond shoe buckles, discarding therewith his glorious arrogance; throws his philosophy under the table like a worn pack of cards; bows his neck beneath the yoke, submitting himself to the law in virtue of which withered prostitutes become procuresses, gamblers become cardsharps, adventurers become toadies. Now that the blood has ceased to course warmly through his veins, the sometime “citoyen du monde” begins to shiver, and to suffer from homesickness. Putting his pride in his pocket, repenting him of his offenses, he begs the Venetian government for forgiveness. He writes lickspittle reports to the inquisitors, composes a patriotic booklet, a “refutatione” of the attacks on the Venetian government, in which he is not ashamed to declare that the Leads, where he had pined in prison, are “a well-ventilated place,” an earthly paradise. Of these distressing episodes, there is no word in the memoirs, which end prematurely, and tell the reader nothing about the years of shame. He shrouds them in obscurity, lest he should blush; and we are inclined to congratulate ourselves for this, seeing that Casanova the toady, Casanova the police spy, conflicts too painfully with the doughty warrior of earlier days.
Thus for a few years there slinks across the Merceria a corpulent and rubicund man, who is no longer fashionably dressed. He listens attentively to all that the Venetians are saying, sits in taverns watching suspicious characters, and in the evenings writes tedious reports to the inquisitors. They are signed “Angelo Pratolini,” the alias of a pardoned ex-convict, who for a few gold pieces is willing to send others to the prison in which he himself had been confined in youth, the prison whose description has made him famous. Casanova, Chevalier de Seingalt, the darling of women, the victorious seducer, has become Angelo Pratolini, informer and nark; the fingers that were once adorned with diamonds are now busied in writing sordid denunciations, in sprinkling ink and gall venomously to right and to left, until even Venice wearies of his complaints and expels him from its precincts.
Information is scanty as concerns Casanova’s life during the next few years. Upon what gloomy seas did the wreck drift until it was at length cast ashore in Bohemia? The elderly adventurer still wandered to and fro across Europe, making trial of his customary arts in the hope of extracting money from the rich and the noble — cardsharp, cabalist, and pimp, as of yore. Alas, the favoring gods of his youth, his impudence, his self-confidence, had abandoned him; women laughed at his wrinkled face, and he was hard put to it to get a living. He became secretary (probably a euphemism for spy) at the embassy in Vienna; and there is evidence of expulsion from a number of towns. In Vienna, at long last, he designed to marry a streetwalker, that the earnings of her sorry but lucrative trade might provide him with the wherewithal to live; this excellent scheme came to nothing. At length Count Waldstein, a man fabulously rich, with a taste for the occult, came across Casanova in Paris, and took pity on him, charmed by the derelict’s cynical volubility. He invited the adventurer to Dux as librarian, which meant court jester. Waldstein bought Casanova as he would have bought any other curio, paying for this one a thousand gulden a year — a salary which was always pledged in advance to Casanova’s creditors. At Dux the old man lived, or rather died, for thirteen years.
After a long period of obscurity, he once more becomes plainly visible. He is Casanova again, or at any rate something which vaguely reminds us of Casanova. He is Casanova’s mummy, a withered vestige, pickled in his own gall, a strange specimen which the count shows to guests. They look upon him as an extinct crater, entertaining, no longer dangerous, lively and amusing after the southland fashion, but slowly perishing of boredom in this Bohemian eyrie. Yet for the last time Casanova fools the world. While all think him utterly outworn, dead to life and a candidate for the cemetery, he makes a new life for himself out of his memories, and, in a supreme venture, ensures for himself immortality.
LIKENESS OF CASANOVA IN OLD AGE
Altera nunc rerum facies, me quaero, nec adsum,
Non sum, qui fueram, non putor esse: fui.
INSCRIPTION BENEATH CASANOVA’S PORTRAIT AT THE AGE OF SIXTY-THREE
We are in the years 1797 and 1798. The bloodstained broom of the revolution has been sweeping up the debris of the gallant century; the heads of His Most Christian Majesty and of Queen Marie Antoinette have fallen into the basket of the guillotine; and now a little general from Corsica has made short work of dozens of petty princes, the Venetian inquisitors not excepted. Nobody is reading the Encyclopedia any longer, or the writings of Voltaire and Rousseau, for interest is concentrated upon the bulletins from the seat of war. Europe is a sober place; carnival days are over, and with them have vanished rococo, hooped petticoats, powdered wigs, silver shoe buckles, and Brussels lace. Velvet coats are out of fashion; everyone who is not in uniform wears plain cloth. But here is a strange figure, an old fellow rusticating in an out-of-the-way corner of Bohemia, who seems to have taken no note of the passing of time. Like Herr Ritter Gluck in Hoffman’s tale, he is decked out in all the colors of the rainbow, velvet waistcoat with gold buttons, neckcloth of worn and yellow lace, clocked stockings, flowered garters, and white-plumed hat. In this rig, he leaves Castle Dux and makes his way over the cobblestones into the town. He still wears a wig, carelessly powdered it is true (for he no longer has a servant), and he leans on a goldheaded cane such as might have been seen in the Palais Royal more than half a century before. Yes, it is really Casanova, or rather his mummy; he is still alive, despite poverty, manifold vexations, and syphilis. His skin is like parchment; his great hooked nose projects formidably over his thin-lipped, slavering mouth; his bushy brows are white; he exhales a stuffy aroma, as of dried gall and book dust. But his eyes, black as pitch, have the old restless gleam, peering angrily from beneath the half-closed lids. Their expression is not a pleasant one, for he has been a peevish fellow ever since fortune cast him on to this Bohemian dunghill. He vouchsafes scarcely a glance at the stupid townsfolk; they are hardly worth a civil greeting, these clownish fellows who have never been outside their native village. “What is there in common between them and myself, the Chevalier de Seingalt, who once fired a bullet into the august body of the court chamberlain of Poland, and who received the golden spurs from the Pope’s own hands?” Sad to relate, even the women do not respect him. They hold their hands in front of their mouths, to keep themselves from laughing at him openly. Still, it is better to walk abroad among these common folk than to sit at home among those blackguards of servants, “the blockheads whose kicks I have to endure”; Feltkirchner worst of all, the steward, and Widerholt, his tool. What brutes they are! On purpose, yesterday, they emptied the s
altcellar into the soup, and burned the macaroni; they tore his portrait out of his Icosameron, and hung it up in the privy; they actually dared to whip the little bitch Melampyge which countess Roggendorf had given him, simply because the poor beast had misbehaved in one of the rooms. Oh for the good old days when one would have put such unruly servants in the stocks, or have been able to order them a sound flogging, instead of having to endure their insolence. But today, thanks to Robespierre, the canaille has the upper hand, the Jacobins have ruined everything, and he himself is nothing more than a poor old dog whose teeth are worn out. Well, well, what’s the use of grumbling; he had better go back to his room and read Horace.
Today his troubles are forgotten for the nonce, and the old mummy is bustling about in fine fettle. He has put on his threadbare court dress, and is wearing all his orders, for the count has personally informed him that his grace of Teplitz is coming, accompanied by the Prince de Ligne and other noblemen. They will talk French at table, and the envious pack of servants will have to stand behind his chair and treat him as one of the distinguished company, to hand him his food properly, instead of throwing it to him as one throws a bone to a dog. Yes, he will sit down to dinner at the big table among the Austrian noblemen, who know how to value sprightly conversation, how to listen to a philosopher whom even Voltaire respected, one who in former days was a welcome guest at the table of emperors and kings. Perhaps after the ladies have withdrawn, Count Waldstein and the Prince de Ligne will ask him to read a chapter from his interesting memoirs. He will probably comply — probably, not certainly, for he is not Count Waldstein’s servant, and compelled to obey orders; he is a guest, a librarian, an equal. Anyhow, he will tell them one or two good stories, in the style of his sometime teacher, Monsieur Crébillon; or one or two spicy tales of the Venetian sort. “We shall all be noblemen together, and shall understand the finer shades. We shall laugh merrily over our wine, a dark and heavy burgundy like that drunk at the court of His Most Christian Majesty; shall converse about war, alchemy, and books; and an elderly philosopher will certainly be able to impart a little of his wisdom concerning the world and women.”
Greatly excited, he hobbles through the suite of rooms, looking like a withered and malicious bird, his eyes sparkling with arrogance and spite. He polishes up the spurious gems in the cross he is going to wear (the genuine stones have gone to the Jews long since); standing in front of the mirror, he practices bowing after the manner of the court of Louis XV. It is a pity that he has grown stiff, that his back creaks when he tries to bend it, but what can you expect when one has been driving in postchaises over the length and breadth of Europe for seventy years, and when the women have drained away one’s sap? Still, the wits have not all run out of his brain-box; he will know how to make a good showing and to amuse the company. In the best handwriting he can achieve — it is rather tremulous, but still beautifully legible — he copies out on a piece of handmade paper a poem in the French tongue, a poem of welcome to the Princesse de Recke; and he paints a pompous dedication on the front of his new comedy for the amateur stage. Even while vegetating here in Dux, he has not forgotten the proprieties, and, as a gentleman, he knows how to greet an assembly of persons interested in literature.
Nor is he disappointed when the carriages drive up to the door, and, on his gouty feet, he stumps down the steps to welcome the newcomers. While Count Waldstein and the guests toss their headgear and their cloaks to the servants they embrace Casanova as a member of their own order, and to those who have not met him before he is presented as the famous Chevalier de Seingalt. There is talk of his literary merits, and the ladies vie with one another to have him sitting beside them at table. Even before the dishes have been cleared away, everything happens as he had foreseen. The Prince de Ligne asks how he is getting on with that extraordinarily interesting account of his life; and thereupon, with one voice, the ladies and gentlemen beg him to read them a chapter from the book. How can he refuse to comply with any wish of his benefactor, Count Waldstein? Casanova trots upstairs to his room, and from among the fifteen manuscript folios he selects the volume in which the marker lies. This contains the showpiece, one of the few chapters it is safe to read in mixed company, the account of his escape from the Leads in Venice. He has related this incomparable adventure so often: to the Elector of Bavaria, to the Elector of Cologne, to men of high rank in England and in Poland. He will show them that a Casanova can write more spiritedly than that heavy Prussian Herr von Trenck, about whose escape from prison so much fuss has been made. Recently Casanova has introduced some fine new turns of phrase, has dwelt upon some remarkable complications, and has finished up with a most effective quotation from the divine Dante. The reading is a great success. There are salvos of applause; the count embraces him, and as he does so slips a rouleau of ducats into the old fellow’s pocket. Well, Casanova can find a use for them! Though the world in general may have forgotten him, his creditors are well informed as to his whereabouts! But he is sincerely touched by these attentions, and the tears actually course down his cheeks when the princess congratulates him in kindly words, and when all drink to the speedy completion of his masterpiece.
Next day, alas, the horses have been put to and are pawing the ground impatiently in the courtyard. The noble company is about to start for Prague, and, although the librarian has hinted more than once that he has urgent business in that city, no one offers him a lift. He must stay behind in the huge, cold, draughty castle, exposed to the insolence of the rabble of servants, who are ready to grin contemptuously at Casanova the instant Count Waldstein’s back is turned. He is left alone among barbarians, not one of whom can speak French or Italian, not one of whom can converse about Ariosto and Jean-Jacques. He cannot spend all his time writing letters to the dry-as-dust Herr Opitz, in Czaslau, and to the small number of good-natured ladies who still keep up a correspondence with him. The spirit of boredom has once more taken possession of these uninhabited rooms, and the gout, which he had managed to forget yesterday, has returned in full force today. Grumpily Casanova takes off his court dress, and dons his thick Turkish dressing gown; splenetically he sidles off to his last refuge, to his memories, to his writing table. Carefully mended quills are waiting for him beside the blank folios on which he is to write. He sets himself to his task once more, and posterity may bless the tedium which induces him to write the story of his life.
For behind this death’s-head countenance, behind this parchment-like skin, a vigorous memory has been preserved in excellent condition, like the flesh of a nut inside a hard and wrinkled shell. All remains in good order within the brain-box betwixt forehead and occiput. The sparkling eyes, the eager nostrils, the clutching hands, the gouty fingers — his memory retains all that they have seen, all that they have handled, in a thousand adventures; can recall every detail of the smooth feminine bodies which the fingers had once so ardently caressed. Now the fingers set themselves to writing of these things for thirteen hours at a stretch (“thirteen hours which pass in a flash as if they had been thirteen minutes”). Lying on the table is a medley of the faded letters from his sometime mistresses, mementoes, locks of hair, all kinds of relics; and just as a silvery smoke will still rise above the embers when the flames are quenched, so an invisible cloud of delicate aroma hovers over the ancient memorials. Every embrace, every kiss, every surrender, is called up to play its part in the phantasmagoria; and this conjuration of the past is not work but play, “Le plaisir de se souvenir ces plaisirs.” The old man’s eyes shine brightly; his lips twitch in his excitement; he mutters to himself as he reshapes dialogues, involuntarily mimicking his inamoratas’ voices, and laughing as he retells his own jests. He forgets to eat and to drink; forgets his poverty, his lowly situation, and his impotence; forgets the sorrows and ignominies of his old age. In this dream life, he has grown young once again; Henriette, Babette, and Thérèse, the shades he has summoned from the dead, are smiling on him again, and perhaps he enjoys their necromantic presence even more t
han he enjoyed them in the flesh. He writes and writes, an adventurer with the pen as aforetime he was an adventurer with his whole ardent body; he paces up and down the room, reading over to himself what he has written, laughing heartily, self-forgetful.