“It is your grave,” he said quietly. “I mean to bury you here dead or alive. I’ve done with you. But you may run away if you like, I shall not follow you.” Speech and manner were convincing. The monk thought it best to accept the proposal and took himself off.
Casanova, overjoyed at being alone, trudged on into the next village, Valdobbiadene by name, and here he made cautious inquiries as to the names of residents and the houses they occupied. One of the most important pointed out to him was that of the chief of police of the district, and to this with rare effrontery he at once proceeded. Some secret voice told him that he would run no danger, and on knocking at the door he heard that the man he had so much reason to dread was absent for some days. “He is helping in the search for two notorious prisoners,” said the wife who answered. “They have just escaped from the Piombi; one is called Casanova.” “Dear me, I am sorry not to find him, I am his old friend and comrade. I have come a long distance from hunting in the mountains (in silk stockings and a coat of taffety!); will you give me shelter for the night?” The warmest welcome was accorded him; he was given a good supper, his sore feet were dressed, and he slept all round the clock in a luxurious bed, and waking refreshed and restored, went on his way rejoicing. This was not the only good luck of the sort that fell to him by the way. He found food and lodging in another hospitable house, the master of which was absent, and ran into one or two people who knew him but did not interfere with him.
One last escapade must be told exhibiting his bold and desperate temper. Reaching the house of a friend of his, he entered and claimed assistance, offering to give him a draft on Signor Bragadino as security for a loan of sixty sequins. The recreant friend refused, fearing to offend the Council of Ten, and declined to give him even a glass of water. The man was under great obligations to Casanova, who fiercely resented this cruel treatment and at once adopted a menacing tone, crowbar in hand. The coward threw his keys on the table and bade Casanova help himself from a drawer.
“I will take six sequins,” he said. “It is true I asked for sixty, but that was as a loan from a friend. Now let me go in peace, or I will come back and burn your house over your head.”
The rest of the journey to the frontier, which he reached safely, was made without contretemps. Sometimes Casanova walked, sometimes he rode a donkey; the last stage he travelled in a cart with a couple of horses. At Valstagna he found Balbi in the place indicated, and the monk frankly told him he never expected to see him again. Casanova would indeed have gladly separated from him there and then, for Balbi proved a drag on him for some time to come. In the end he was recommitted to prison, was released from his vows and died in Venice a pauper, debauched and dissolute to the last.
Casanova, having received a sum of money from his friends in Venice, passed on to Munich, where he obtained permission to reside until he went to Paris in the winter of 1757, where good luck befriended him and he became one of the directors of the national lottery; he made a large income and for a time was on the top of the wave. It is beyond the scope of this volume to follow him in his varied and adventurous career in which he so nearly secured a substantial fortune but constantly missed it from the want of the more sterling qualities of steadiness and honesty. He was always a frank Bohemian, a reckless gambler and unprincipled roué and charlatan, imposing on the credulity of foolish ladies who believed him to be possessed of supernatural gifts and the secret of the “philosopher’s stone.” Bankers and great financiers befriended him and helped him to make large sums; but he wasted his capital in a foolish attempt at manufacturing printed silk at Lyons, which failed, and he was brought to the verge of ruin. He next wandered through Europe as a professional gambler, cutting a great figure in the best society at times, in which, however, he was laughed at and despised. He led a life of intrigue, fought duels, won much money, not always by fair means, and by degrees gained an evil reputation and the attentions of the police, who constantly warned him to “move on” from the capitals and great cities. Nothing prospered with him and in these days of decadence he made fresh acquaintance with the interior of prisons. When in London he was locked up in Newgate as the penalty of being engaged in a street brawl. In Madrid he was lodged in the prison of the Buen Petiro, and was afterward for a time in the citadel of Barcelona. When his fortunes were at the lowest ebb he obtained permission to return to Venice and lived in obscurity for a time in his native city; but again he visited Paris, where he made friends with Count Waldstein who offered him the hospitality of his castle at Dux in Bohemia. Here he was appointed librarian on a modest pittance and spent the last fourteen years of his life, a broken miserable man, subjected, as he thought, to constant indignities and enduring all the pangs of exile from his native Venice, with no one to console him in his last hours.
CHAPTER X
THE VICARIA OF NAPLES
Prisons of the Two Sicilies—Castel Capuano called the Vicaria—Notorious reputation—Ill-treatment of political prisoners—British indignation—Mr. Gladstone’s open letter to Lord Aberdeen—Reforms promised but not carried out—Prison at Palermo—Island prisons—Nisida—Description of convict life there—Interior of the prison—The Camorra—Its powerful influence in the prisons—Details of organisation—Vitality of Camorrists—Prominent members defy authority—Society makes its own laws and enforces them rigidly—Still in existence in the south and especially in the convict colonies.
The most interesting, and undoubtedly the most cruel and oppressive prisons were those of the kingdom of the Two Sicilies, and one of the worst in Naples is described as typical of the rest—the infamous prison of the Castel Capuano, so called from the district in which it was situated, and also called the Vicaria, the name it bears to this day, derived from the viceroy who ruled in the days of the Spanish domination. This prison gained an unenviable reputation in the time of King Ferdinand II, when its horrible condition drew down upon it the unmeasured reproaches of Mr. William E. Gladstone. The Bourbon government, ever cruel and tyrannical, was indeed rousing the indignation of the civilised world by its misusage of its political prisoners. Arbitrary arrests were made wholesale, trial was tardy, often there was no trial at all; conviction was obtained by perjury or conspiracy, and worse than all, the victims of these unworthy processes were thrown into the foulest dens or dungeons mostly unfit for human occupation.
In 1851 Mr. Gladstone, after a prolonged personal inquiry, addressed an open letter to the British premier, at that time Lord Aberdeen, in which he uttered his protest with indignant eloquence. He describes the prisons of Naples as being the extreme of filth and horror, and declares that in the Vicaria he saw the doctors, not going to the sick prisoners, but the sick prisoners, men almost with death upon their faces, toiling up-stairs to them, because the lower regions of such a place of darkness were too foul and loathsome to allow it to be expected that professional men should consent to earn bread by entering them. The diet consisted of black bread and soup, the first sound, but coarse to the last degree, the latter so nauseous that nothing but the extreme of hunger could overcome the repugnance of nature to it. The association was indiscriminate among a crowd of between three and four hundred murderers, thieves, all kinds of ordinary criminals, some condemned and some uncondemned, and the politically accused. They were a self-governed community, the main authority being that of the camorristi, the men of most celebrity among them for audacious crime. Employment they had none. This swarm of human beings all slept in a low long vaulted room, having no light except from a single and very moderate sized grating at one end. The political prisoners, upon payment, had the privilege of a separate chamber, but there was no division between them.