Casanova laughed. "No sin? Wherefore not? Because I"m an old man?"
"You are not old. For me you can never be an old man. In your arms I had my first taste of bliss, and I doubt not it is my destiny that my last bliss shall be shared with you!"
"Your last?" rejoined Casanova cynically, though he was not altogether unmoved. "I think my friend Olivo would have a word to say about that."
"What you speak of," said Amalia reddening, "is duty, and even pleasure; but it is not and never has been bliss."
They did not walk to the end of the gra.s.s alley. Both seemed to shun the neighborhood of the greensward, where Marcolina and the children were playing. As if by common consent they retraced their steps, and, silent now, approached the house again. One of the ground-floor windows at the gable end of the house was open. Through this Casanova glimpsed in the dark interior a half-drawn curtain, from behind which the foot of a bed projected. Over an adjoining chair was hanging a light, gauzy dress.
"Is that Marcolina"s room?" enquired Casanova.
Amalia nodded. "Do you like her?" she said--nonchalantly, as it seemed to Casanova.
"Of course, since she is good looking."
"She"s a good girl as well."
Casanova shrugged, as if the goodness were no concern of his. Then: "Tell me, Amalia, did you think me still handsome when you first saw me to-day?"
"I do not know if your looks have changed. To me you seem just the same as of old. You are as I have always seen you, as I have seen you in my dreams."
"Look well, Amalia. See the wrinkles on my forehead; the loose folds of my neck; the crow"s-feet round my eyes. And look," he grinned, "I have lost one of my eye teeth. Look at these hands, too, Amalia. My fingers are like claws; there are yellow spots on the finger-nails; the blue veins stand out. They are the hands of an old man."
She clasped both his hands as he held them out for her to see, and affectionately kissed them one after the other in the shaded walk.
"To-night, I will kiss you on the lips," she said, with a mingling of humility and tenderness, which roused his gall.
Close by, where the alley opened on to the greensward, Marcolina was stretched on the gra.s.s, her hands clasped beneath her head, looking skyward while the shuttlec.o.c.ks flew to and fro. Suddenly reaching upwards, she seized one of them in mid air, and laughed triumphantly.
The girls flung themselves upon her as she lay defenceless.
Casanova thrilled. "Neither my lips nor my hands are yours to kiss.
Your waiting for me and your dreams of me will prove to have been vain--unless I should first make Marcolina mine."
"Are you mad, Casanova?" exclaimed Amalia, with distress in her voice.
"If I am, we are both on the same footing," replied Casanova. "You are mad because in me, an old man, you think that you can rediscover the beloved of your youth; I am mad because I have taken it into my head that I wish to possess Marcolina. But perhaps we shall both be restored to reason. Marcolina shall restore me to youth--for you. So help me to my wishes, Amalia!"
"You are really beside yourself, Casanova. What you ask is impossible.
She will have nothing to do with any man."
Casanova laughed. "What about Lieutenant Lorenzi?"
"Lorenzi? What do you mean?"
"He is her lover. I am sure of it."
"You are utterly mistaken. He asked for her hand, and she rejected his proposal. Yet he is young and handsome. I almost think him handsomer than you ever were, Casanova!"
"He was a suitor for her hand?"
"Ask Olivo if you don"t believe me."
"Well, what do I care about that? What care I whether she be virgin or strumpet, wife or widow--I want to make her mine!"
"I can"t give her to you, my friend!" Amalia"s voice expressed genuine concern.
"You see for yourself," he said, "what a pitiful creature I have become.
Ten years ago, five years ago, I should have needed neither helper nor advocate, even though Marcolina had been the very G.o.ddess of virtue. And now I am trying to make you play the procuress. If I were only a rich man. Had I but ten thousand ducats. But I have not even ten. I am a beggar, Amalia."
"Had you a hundred thousand, you could not buy Marcolina. What does she care about money? She loves books, the sky, the meadows, b.u.t.terflies, playing with children. She has inherited a small competence which more than suffices for her needs."
"Were I but a sovereign prince," cried Casanova, somewhat theatrically, as was his wont when strongly moved. "Had I but the power to commit men to prison, to send them to the scaffold. But I am nothing. A beggar, and a liar into the bargain. I importune the Supreme Council for a post, a crust of bread, a home! What a poor thing have I become! Are you not sickened by me, Amalia?"
"I love you, Casanova!"
"Then give her to me, Amalia. It rests with you, I am confident. Tell her what you please. Say I have threatened you. Say you think I am capable of setting fire to the house. Say I am a fool, a dangerous lunatic escaped from an asylum, but that the embraces of a virgin will restore me to sanity. Yes, tell her that."
"She does not believe in miracles."
"Does not believe in miracles? Then she does not believe in G.o.d either.
So much the better! I have influence with the Archbishop of Milan. Tell her so. I can ruin her. I can destroy you all. It is true, Amalia. What books does she read? Doubtless some of them are on the Index. Let me see them. I will compile a list. A hint from me...."
"Not a word more, Casanova! Here she comes. Keep yourself well in hand; do not let your eyes betray you. Listen, Casanova; I have never known a purer-minded girl. Did she suspect what I have heard from you, she would feel herself soiled, and for the rest of your stay she would not so much as look at you. Talk to her; talk to her. You will soon ask her pardon and mine."
Marcolina came up with the girls, who ran on into the house. She paused, as if out of courtesy to the guest, standing before him, while Amalia deliberately withdrew. Indeed, it actually seemed to Casanova that from those pale, half-parted lips, from the smooth brow crowned with light-brown hair now restored to order, there emanated an aroma of aloofness and purity. Rarely had he had this feeling with regard to any woman; nor had he had it in the case of Marcolina when they were within four walls. A devotional mood, a spirit of self-sacrifice knowing nothing of desire, seemed to take possession of his soul. Discreetly, in a respectful tone such as at that day was customary towards persons of rank, in a manner which she could not but regard as flattering, he enquired whether it was her purpose to resume her studies that evening.
She answered that in the country her work was somewhat irregular.
Nevertheless, even during free hours, mathematical problems upon which she had recently been pondering, would at times invade her mind unawares. This had just happened while she was lying on the greensward gazing up into the sky.
Casanova, emboldened by the friendliness of her demeanor, asked jestingly what was the nature of this lofty, urgent problem. She replied, in much the same tone, that it had nothing whatever to do with the Cabala, with which, so rumor ran, the Chevalier de Seingalt worked wonders. He would therefore not know what to make of her problem.
Casanova was piqued that she should speak of the Cabala with such unconcealed contempt. In his rare hours of heart-searching he was well aware that the mystical system of numbers which pa.s.sed by that name had neither sense nor purpose. He knew it had no correspondence with any natural reality; that it was no more than an instrument whereby cheats and jesters--Casanova a.s.sumed these roles by turn, and was a master player in both capacities--could lead credulous fools by the nose.
Nevertheless, in defiance of his own better judgment, he now undertook to defend the Cabala as a serious and perfectly valid science. He spoke of the divine nature of the number seven, to which there are so many references in Holy Writ; of the deep prophetic significance of pyramids of figures, for the construction of which he had himself invented a new system; and of the frequent fulfilment of the forecasts he had based upon this system. In Amsterdam, a few years ago, through the use of arithmancy, he had induced Hope the banker to take over the insurance of a ship which was already reported lost, whereby the banker had made two hundred thousand gold guilders. He held forth so eloquently in defence of his preposterous theories that, as often happened, he began to believe all the nonsense he was talking. At length he went so far as to maintain that the Cabala was not so much a branch of mathematics as the metaphysical perfectionment of mathematics.
At this point, Marcolina, who had been listening attentively and with apparent seriousness, suddenly a.s.sumed a half-commiserating, half-mischievous expression, and said:
"You are trying, Signor Casanova"--she seemed deliberately to avoid addressing him as Chevalier--"to give me an elaborate proof of your renowned talent as entertainer, and I am extremely grateful to you.
But of course you know as well as I do that the Cabala has not merely nothing to do with mathematics, but is in conflict with the very essence of mathematics. The Cabala bears to mathematics the same sort of relationship that the confused or fallacious chatter of the Sophists bore to the serene, lofty doctrines of Plato and of Aristotle."
"Nevertheless, beautiful and learned Marcolina, you will admit,"
answered Casanova promptly, "that even the Sophists were far from being such contemptible, foolish apprentices as your harsh criticism would imply. Let me give you a contemporary example. M. Voltaire"s whole technique of thought and writing ent.i.tles us to describe him as an Arch-Sophist. Yet no one will refuse the due meed of honor to his extraordinary talent. I would not myself refuse it, though I am at this moment engaged in composing a polemic against him. Let me add that I am not allowing myself to be influenced in his favor by recollection of the extreme civility he was good enough to show me when I visited him at Ferney ten years ago."
"It is really most considerate of you to be so lenient in your criticism of the greatest mind of the century!" Marcolina smilingly retorted.
"A great mind--the greatest of the century!" exclaimed Casanova. "To give him such a designation seems to me inadmissible, were it only because, for all his genius, he is an unG.o.dly man--nay positively an atheist. No atheist can be a man of great mind."
"As I see the matter, there is no such incompatibility. But the first thing you have to prove is your t.i.tle to describe Voltaire as an atheist."
Casanova was now in his element. In the opening chapter of his polemic he had cited from Voltaire"s works, especially from the famous _Pucelle_, a number of pa.s.sages that seemed peculiarly well-fitted to justify the charge of atheism. Thanks to his unfailing memory, he was able to repeat these citations verbatim, and to marshal his own counter-arguments. But in Marcolina he had to cope with an opponent who was little inferior to himself in extent of knowledge and mental ac.u.men; and who, moreover, excelled him, not perhaps in fluency of speech, but at any rate in artistry of presentation and clarity of expression. The pa.s.sages Casanova had selected as demonstrating Voltaire"s spirit of mockery, his scepticism, and his atheism, were adroitly interpreted by Marcolina as testifying to the Frenchman"s scientific genius, to his skill as an author, and to his indefatigable ardor in the search for truth. She boldly contended that doubt, mockery, nay unbelief itself, if a.s.sociated with such a wealth of knowledge, such absolute honesty, and such high courage, must be more pleasing to G.o.d than the humility of the pious, which was apt to be a mask for lack of capacity to think logically, and often enough--there were plenty of examples--a mask for cowardice and hypocrisy.