The general retired to his cabin in the bowels of our floating hell, and sent Lieutenant-Colonel Micheli, his major in the province, to make out a list of all the officers and volunteers on board, together with the names of their protectors. Nobody expected this; for we had been personally presented to the general at Venice, and had explained our affairs in frequent conversations. Once more I reflected that this was his way of damping the expectations which might have been bred in scheming brains before he exchanged the politenesses of private life for the austerities of office. The Maggiore della Provincia Micheli—a most excellent person and very fat—bustled about his business, sweating, and scribbling with a pencil on a sheet of paper, as though the matter was one of life or death. Everybody began to shy and grumble and chafe with indignation at passing under review in this way. When my turn came, I answered frankly that I was called Carlo Gozzi, and that I had been recommended by the patrician Almorò Cesare Tiepolo. I withheld his title of senator and the fact that he was my maternal uncle, deeming it prudent not to seem ambitious.
The Generalizia, convoyed by another galley named Conserva and a few light vessels of war, got under way for the Adriatic;[116] and the night fell very dark upon the waters. I shall not easily forget that night, because of a little incident which happened to me, and which shows what a curious place of refuge a galley is for young men leaving their homes for the first time. A natural necessity made me seek some corner for retirement. I was directed to the bowsprit; on approaching it, an Illyrian sentinel, with scowling visage, bushy whiskers, and levelled musket, howled his "Who goes there?" in a tremendous voice. When he understood my business, he let me pass. My next step lighted on a soft and yielding mass, which gave forth a kind of gurgling sound, like the stifled breath of an asthmatic patient, into the dark silent night. Retracing my path, I asked the sentinel what the thing was, which responded with its inarticulate gurgling voice to the pressure of my feet. He answered with the coldest indifference that it was the corpse of a galley-slave, who had succumbed to the fever, and had been flung there till he could be buried on the sea-shore sands in Istria. The hair on my head bristled with horror. But my happy disposition for seeing the ludicrous side of things soon came to my assistance.
After twelve days of much discomfort, and twelve noisome nights, passed in broken slumbers under the decks of that galley, which only too well deserved its name, our little fleet entered the port of Zara. We went on shore at first privately and quietly; and after a few days the public ceremonies of official disembarkation were gone through. The Provveditore Generale Jacopo Cavalli handed his baton of command over to the Provveditore Generale Girolamo Quirini with all the formalities proper to the occasion. This solemnity, which is performed upon the open sea, to the sound of military music, the thunder of artillery, and the crackling of musket-shots, deserves to be witnessed by all who take an interest in imposing spectacles. An old man, fat and short of stature, with a pair of moustachios bristling up beneath his nostrils, a merry and most honest fellow to boot, who bore the name of Captain Girolamo Visinoni, was appointed master of these ceremonies, on account of his intimate acquaintance with their details. I had no other duty that day but to wear my best clothes, which did not cost much trouble.
V.
I Fall Dangerously Ill; Recover; Form the only Intimate Acquaintance I made in Dalmatia.
When the new Regency had been established and the Court settled, I had but eight days to learn my duties as volunteer or adjutant[117] to his Excellency, as it is called there, before I fell ill of a fever which was declared to be malignant. Alone among people whom I hardly knew, at the commencement of my career, poorly provided with money, and lying in a wretched room, the windows of which were closed with torn and rotten paper instead of glass, I could not but compare my present destitution with the comforts of our home. Here I was battling with a mortal disease in solitude. There, at the least touch of illness, I enjoyed the tender solicitude of a sister or a servant at my pillow, to brush away the flies which settled on my forehead. Fortunately, I was not so strongly attached to life as to be rendered miserable by unavailing recollections and gloomy forebodings.
It happened one day, as I lay there burning, that a convict presented himself at the door of my miserable den, and asked me if I wanted anything which he could fetch me. He was one of those men who prowl around the officers' quarters, wrapped in an old blanket with a bit of rope about the waist, ready to do any dirty business and to pilfer if they find the opportunity. I gave him a few farthings and told him to send me a confessor—an errand very different from what he had expected. Before long a good Dominican appeared, who prepared me to die with the courage of an ancient Roman. Our modern sages may laugh at this plebeian wish of mine to make my peace with Heaven; but I have never been able to dissociate philosophy from religion. Satisfied to remain a little child before the mysteries of faith, I do not envy wise men in their disengagement from spiritual terrors.
The chief physician, Danieli, a man of prodigious corpulence and blackness, who had been sent to my assistance by the Governor, spared no attentions and no remedies. As usual, they proved unavailing; and he bade me prepare myself for death by receiving the holy sacrament. I summoned what remained to me of vital force, and went through this ceremony with devotion. There seemed to be so little difference between a sepulchre and the room in which my body lay, that I felt no disgust at relinquishing my corpse to the grave-diggers. I was now ready for the last unction, when an attack of hemorrhage from the nostrils, like those which had already nearly brought me to death's door, recalled me for the nonce to life. All the ordinary remedies—ligatures, powders, herbs, astringent plasters, sympathetic stones, muttered charms, old wives' talismans—were exhibited in vain. After filling two basons with blood, I lapsed into a profound swoon, which the doctor styled a syncope. To all appearances I was dead; but the blood stopped; in a quarter of an hour I revived; and three days afterwards I found myself, weak indeed, but wholly free from fever and on the road to recovery. My ignorance could not reconcile this salutary crisis with Danieli's absolute prohibition of blood-letting in my malady. But I suppose that a score of learned physicians, each of them upon a different system of hypotheses, conjectures, well-based calculations, and trains of lucid argument, would be able to demonstrate the phenomenon to their own satisfaction and to the illumination or confusion of my stupid brain. Stupendous indeed are the mental powers which Almighty God has bestowed on men!
The readers of these Memoirs will hardly need to be informed that my slender purse had nothing in it at the termination of this illness. Under these painful circumstances I found a cordial and open-hearted friend in Signor Innocenzio Massimo, nobleman of Padua, and captain of halbardiers at the Dalmatian Court. This excellent gentleman, of rare distinction for his mental parts, the quickness of his spirit, his courage, energy, and honour, was the only intimate friend whom I possessed during my three years' absence from home. When they were over, our friendship continued undiminished by lapse of time, distance, and the various vicissitudes of life. I have enjoyed it through thirty-five years, and am sure that it will never fail me. Some qualities of his character have exposed him to enmity; among these I may mention a particular sensitiveness to affronts, an intolerance of attempts to deceive him, and a quick perception of fraud, together with a firm resolve to stem the tide of extravagance and fashionable waste in his own family. His many virtues, the decent comfort of his household, his hospitality to friends and acquaintances, his careful provision for the well-being of his posterity, his benevolence to the poor and afflicted, his successful efforts as a peacemaker among discordant fellow-citizens, his expenditure of time and trouble upon all who come to him for advice or assistance, have not sufficed to disarm the malignity of a vulgar crowd, corrupted by the false philosophy of our century, which goes from bad to worse in dissolution and ill manners.