Casanova's Homecoming, Arthur Schnitzler [the false prince TXT] 📗

some one that he had recently seen you in Lisbon, I could be quite sure that in the interval you would have left for Warsaw or Vienna. Now, when as if by miracle I have caught you on the point of quitting Mantua, and when - I can assure you, Amalia, it was no easy matter - I have succeeded in enticing you here, you are so niggard with your time that - would you believe it, Signor Abbate, he refuses to spare us more than a couple of days!"

"Perhaps the Chevalier will allow himself to be persuaded to prolong his visit," said the Abbate, who was contentedly munching a huge mouthful of peach. As he spoke, he glanced at Amalia in a way that led Casanova to infer that his hostess had told the Abbate more than she had told her husband.

"I fear that will be quite impossible," said Casanova with decision. "I need not conceal from friends who are so keenly interested in my fortunes, that my Venetian fellow-citizens are on the point of atoning for the injustice of earlier years. The atonement comes rather late, but is all the more honorable. I should seem ungrateful, or even rancorous, were I to resist their importunities any longer." With a wave of his hand he warded off an eager but respectful enquiry which he saw taking shape upon his host's lips, and hastened to remark: "Well, Olivo, I am ready. Show me your little kingdom."

"Would it not be wiser," interposed Amalia, "to wait until it is cooler? I am sure the Chevalier would prefer to rest for a while, or to stroll in the shade." Her eyes sought Casanova's with shy entreaty, as if she thought her fate would be decided once again during such a walk in the garden.

No one had anything to say against Amalia's suggestion, and they all went out of doors. Marcolina, who led the way, ran across the sunlit greensward to join the children in their game of battledore and shuttlecock. She was hardly taller than the eldest of the three girls; and when her hair came loose in the exercise and floated over her shoulders she too looked like a child. Olivo and the Abbate seated themselves on a stone bench beneath the trees, not far from the house. Amalia sauntered on with Casanova. As soon as the two were out of hearing, she began to converse with Casanova in a tone which seemed to ignore the lapse of years.

"So we meet again, Casanova! How I have longed for this day. I never doubted its coming."

"A mere chance has brought me," said Casanova coldly.

Amalia smiled. "Have it your own way," she said. "Anyhow, you are here! All these sixteen years I have done nothing but dream of this day!"

"I can't help thinking," countered Casanova, "that throughout the long interval you must have dreamed of many other things - and must have done more than dream."

Amalia shook her head. "You know better, Casanova. Nor had you forgotten me, for were it otherwise, in your eagerness to get to Venice, you would never have accepted Olivo's invitation."

"What do you mean, Amalia? Can you imagine I have come here to betray your husband?"

"How can you use such a phrase, Casanova? Were I to be yours once again, there would be neither betrayal nor sin."

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 grass 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 grass, her hands clasped beneath her head, looking skyward while the shuttlecocks 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 goddess 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, butterflies, 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 God 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 passed by that name had neither sense nor purpose. He knew it had no correspondence