Early one morning the chief agent of the Inquisitors of State, who was known as “Messier Grande,” came to his lodgings with an escort of thirty soldiers and arrested him while he was in bed. While the police secured his papers and his compromising books, Casanova dressed himself leisurely; he shaved and combed his locks and put on his best clothes, a shirt of finest lace and a long coat of the best taffety, “just as if he was going to a wedding party,” he explains. Then Messier Grande carried him off in a gondola to a place of security where he was locked up until the afternoon, when an order arrived to take him to prison. The police gondola followed a devious track through the smaller canals and at last reached the Grand Canal where it ran alongside the palace stairs. Here they landed and the prisoner was ushered into the presence of an official wearing a patrician’s robe, who scanned him from head to foot and said briefly, “Take him and lock him up.” This was the secretary of the inquisitors, who talked in Tuscan as if ashamed to use the Venetian dialect.
Casanova next gives us a glimpse of the interior of the prison: “Messier Grande now handed me over to the warder of the Piombi, who, with an enormous bunch of keys in his hand, led me up two small staircases into a gallery, to a locked door, through it into a second gallery, at the end of which we entered a dirty garret, badly lighted by a circular window high up. I thought this was my prison chamber, but I was mistaken, for at the end was another door double-lined with iron, perforated by a circular hole, and I was ordered to enter. For the moment I was otherwise engaged, curiously examining a strange machine strongly attached to the wall. It was an iron horseshoe an inch thick and five inches across the opening. ‘Oh that,’ explained the gaoler, ‘you would like to know what that is? When their excellencies, the inquisitors, desire that any one should be strangled, he takes his seat on the stool below, and this machine is put round his neck, half of which it encircles. A silken cord, attached to a wheel, is placed round the other half and by turning a handle the silk is tightened until death ensues and the sufferer gives up his soul to God—for you will understand the priest is close at hand and never leaves him until all is over.’ ‘Ah,’ I replied, ‘and I presume it is your business to tighten the cord.’ He would not condescend to answer but led me into my cell and left me asking whether I would like to order any food. ‘I haven’t thought of it yet,’ I said lightly, and he went away. I paid the penalty of thus showing temper, for he did not return till next day and I was left for twenty-four hours wholly without food.”
The prisoner, after recovering a little from his despondency and despair, proceeded to examine his cage. He walked round it with bent head, for it was barely five and a half feet high, and Casanova was a tall man, of quite six feet. He found that the room was some twelve feet square, with an alcove on the fourth side for a bed which was absent, and there was no other furniture whatever. The one small window was closed with six iron bars and gave but little light for a solid block of stone—part of the architecture—lay more than half across, but there was enough light to show him numbers of rats running to and fro. He fell into a state of semi-coma, and passed several hours absorbed in gloomy reflections. Then suddenly he roused himself and displayed ungovernable fury. No one had come near him, he was suffering from intolerable thirst, and the slow hours dragged along without a sign of relief. He raged and stormed and uttered the most piercing cries but to no purpose, as they were not heard beyond his cell walls, and after an hour or more of vain appeals he threw himself exhausted and despairing on the floor, believing that the inhuman inquisitors meant to leave him there to die. What had he done? He taxed his brain seeking the reason for this abominable ill-usage and could find none. He was willing to confess himself a libertine, a gambler, an overbold talker, with no thought but to enjoy life; but in all this there was nothing criminal, no offence against the state. At last nature came to his aid. Worn out by his fierce passion and the want of food and drink, utterly broken and exhausted, he fell into a sound sleep. His awakening was the more terrible. The great clock above his head, and so near that it seemed in his very room, clanged out midnight, and as he turned his hands touched another, icy cold and motionless. Feeling sure it must be that of some corpse, he again shouted aloud in uncontrollable terror. But it was his own hand; he had lain upon it in his heavy sleep and all feeling had left it. Gradually he recovered himself as the dawn broke gray and imperfect, and about eight o’clock came the welcome sound in the distance of jangling keys and bolts run back, and his gaoler appeared, who asked in brutal derision, “Have you had time to think of food yet? Hungry, eh?” Casanova disdained to complain and quietly called for a full meal. “All right, give me the money. Anything else? Don’t you want a bed, a table, chair and so forth? If you fancy you are only here for one night, you are very much mistaken.” The prisoner made out a list including papers and books, but was plainly told they were forbidden. Then the gaoler, whose name was Laurent, left him and presently returned with soup, a little meat and other necessaries.
Casanova’s condition now was pitiable. He had no appetite and he spent the day in horrible discomfort; the sun as it rose to the meridian beat down fiercely on the leaden roof till the room was like an oven, and although he stripped naked the perspiration poured off him in a perfect stream. His sufferings from the heat abated as the evening drew on, but the night had its own terrors: the incessant striking of the clock, the hideous noise from the rats as they ranged to and fro was horrifying, and worse than all, he became the prey of innumerable fleas who fastened on him with inappeasable fury till their incessant attacks caused him painful spasms and poisoned all his blood. Not strangely, the confinement, with the mental and physical tortures endured, soon told upon the prisoner’s health and he was attacked with a dangerous illness which presently yielded to medical treatment, for the authorities provided an excellent doctor, and thus Casanova’s chief woes were those of weariness, heat and fleas. As the days went on and September passed, he was buoyed up with the hope of coming release, for on the first of October new inquisitors would enter upon office, and he felt sure they would set him free. He lay awake throughout the last night of September, counting the moments till daylight should bring his gaoler with the welcome intelligence on which he counted and which never arrived. Many weeks passed before he could bear up against this bitter disappointment, but his fortitude returned with a firm resolve to escape from durance even at the peril of his life.
The forces of nature seemed likely to intervene on his behalf. One morning the shock of an earthquake shook the ducal palace, an off-shoot, really, of that seismic disturbance which at this time destroyed Lisbon. Casanova was looking out from his garret window when he saw the massive stone architrave under the roof outside oscillate to and fro, and he realised then what had happened. Warders and soldiers rushed in terrified, but Casanova took a savage joy in the cataclysm in the vague hope that the solid building would totter to the ground and he would be cast out upon the Piazza of St. Mark a free man, or perish under the ruins. To the dismay of his keepers he raised his voice in impious prayer, “Another stroke, Great God, another and a stronger!” at which the others, believing he had gone mad, crossed themselves and fled.
Casanova philosophically tells us that the man possessed of one fixed aspiration will generally compass his end, however highly placed; he will achieve rank and fortune and a great position, if he keeps his mind steadily to his one idea. With him this idea was to escape, and he pondered over it incessantly, puzzling over the means by which he could attempt it. Certainly they did not lie ready to his hand. He saw a way, feasible enough, of getting out of his cell, but could not imagine how to procure the necessary tools. He was securely lodged, alone and apart, absolutely cut off from outside and his fellow creatures, save his warder, who could only help him by braving terrible penalties. Armed sentries were posted in the corridors and at his door, whose vigilance he could hardly hope to elude and who would easily have overpowered him if he attacked them.
Yet the way of escape was possible through the floor of his chamber which, being perfectly familiar with the geography of the palace, he knew to be just above the hall of the inquisitors where they met for business in the evening after the Council of the Ten, of which they were members, had concluded their proceedings. If he could but break through the floor and lower himself into the great hall below when it was unoccupied, he might walk off by the grand staircase, that of the “Giants,” which visitors to Venice may still admire. There was no difficulty about the exit, but how was he to reach it? We shall see presently how the pressure of his needs stimulated his active brain and sharpened his ingenious wits.
His mind was still labouring to find some solution of the problem when his ill-luck interposed and any action was postponed by the decision of the authorities to give him a cell-companion. The new secretary of the inquisitors had a special grudge against a prisoner just taken, and desired to confine him in the worst quarters possible. Casanova’s cell enjoyed this evil reputation, and Laurent brought him in with the air of one who is conferring a favour, although Casanova would have infinitely preferred to remain alone. The newcomer was in the depths of distress; he was a groom who had dared to fall in love with his master’s daughter, and was miserably unhappy. This wretched creature, who wept unceasingly, shared Casanova’s cell for nearly a month and was then removed to another prison, the Quatri, used by the inquisitors for commonplace offenders, whence after five years’ incarceration, he was exiled to Cherigo for another ten years. Laurent explained that it was a privilege to be detained in the Piombi, which was reserved for prisoners of distinction, while the Quatri received ordinary criminals. After this experience, Casanova’s privacy was again disturbed by the arrival of another companion. This second prisoner was a prosperous money lender who posed as a pauper and would not yield to the exactions attempted by the inquisitors. He was, no doubt, a dishonest person, overreaching and greedy of gain, extraordinarily mean and avaricious; but not unwilling, when forced to it, to purchase his freedom.
Now Casanova’s condition and circumstance were slightly improved. On New Year’s Day, 1756, he was permitted to receive a present from his friend and patron, a noble patrician, by name Bragadino, whose life he had once saved and who in his gratitude treated him as an adopted son. The present was a fine silk dressing gown warmly lined with fox skin and a bag made out of bear hide into which he could put his feet. These were welcome gifts, for the temperature had gone down below freezing point and it was as cold now in the Piombi in winter time as it had been insufferably hot in the past summer. A money allowance was also made him over and above the sum spent on his subsistence, and this further grant might be applied to the purchase of books. Another boon was conceded; that of permission to leave the cell and take exercise in the adjoining corridor, a privilege which led to important consequences. For now at last he laid his hands upon certain “unconsidered trifles” which were to prove of invaluable use in furthering his escape.
This corridor in which he took regular exercise was the receptacle for much old rubbish; several pieces of rickety furniture had been thrown here, a couple of cassoni, or great chests, and a quantity of ancient documents, the records of long forgotten criminal trials. From time to time he turned over this heap of nondescript articles, among which were a warming pan, fire-irons and a pair of old candlesticks, the discarded possessions, no doubt, of some distinguished predecessor to whose comfort and convenience they probably ministered. One other bit of treasure he also found and pounced upon eagerly for future use as a weapon of offence and defence, and yet more as a workman’s tool. This was a straight piece of iron, a foot and a half in length and as thick as a man’s thumb, no doubt a bolt or bar that had been in the lock of a door. Pursuing his investigations, he came upon another article of possible value to him; a piece of black marble six inches long, three inches wide and one inch thick. He promptly took possession of both the bolt and the stone without precisely realising the purpose they would serve, and carried them cautiously to his cell where he hid them carefully away. On subsequent examination he saw plainly that the marble would serve as a whetstone, and that by rubbing it assiduously upon the crowbar, he could manufacture an eight-sided, sharp-edged instrument admirably adapted to help him in breaking prison.