"He comes from Padua, where he has completed his studies."
That phrase preceded me everywhere I went. It opened doors, drew glances, and won me an affection I had not yet earned.
Fathers nodded with approval; old women caressed me; a few younger ones—those who had mastered the art of appearing matronly when it suited them—kissed me lightly on the cheek, declaring it a mother's privilege.
Through the Abbé Josello, curate of Saint-Samuel, I was presented to Monsignor Correre, Patriarch of Venicia.
His serene eyes measured me as he laid the tonsure upon my head, and four months later, by private favour, he conferred upon me the four minor orders.
No words could express the joy and the pride of my grandmother.
Excellent masters were provided to continue my studies, and M. Baffo chose the Abbé Schiavo to teach me a pure Scarletan style—especially poetry, for which I had a marked talent.
I was very comfortably lodged with my brother Francois, who was studying theatrical architecture.
My sister and youngest brother lived with our grandam in a house of her own—a house in which she wished to die, because her husband had drawn his last breath there.
The house in which I lived was the same where my father had died, and whose rent my mother still paid. It was large and well furnished.
Though Abbe Grimani remained my official protector, it was to M. de Malipiero that fortune next guided me.
He was a senator of seventy, a bachelor by policy rather than principle, who had exchanged affairs of state for those of taste.
Three or four times a year he suffered severe attacks of gout that disabled his body. His head, his lungs, and his stomach alone had escaped this cruel havoc.
Yet at table, with a glass of Burgundy and a well-chosen party of ladies who had all known how to make the best of their younger days, and gentlemen always acquainted with the news of the town, he did not appear crippled at all.
He was still a fine man, a great epicure, and a good judge of wine; his wit keen, his knowledge of the world extensive, his eloquence worthy of a son of Venicia.
He had that wisdom which naturally belongs to a senator who has steered public affairs for forty years.
He was a man who had bid farewell to women after possessing some twenty mistresses, and only when he felt himself compelled to acknowledge that he could no longer be accepted by any woman.
He dined alone, however—slowly, painfully—ashamed to make guests witness the labour of his toothless patience.
The solitude grieved his cook, who had the soul of an artist condemned to exhibit his work before an empty hall.
When the Abbe Josello first presented me, I ventured an impertinence.
I opposed earnestly the reason for his solitary meals, and said that His Excellency need only invite guests whose appetite was good enough to let them eat a double share.
The senator raised an eyebrow. "But where can I find such table companions?"
"It is rather a delicate matter," I answered; "but you must take your guests on trial, and after they have been found such as you wish them to be, the only difficulty will be to keep them as your guests without their being aware of the real cause of your preference, for no respectable man could acknowledge that he enjoys the honour of sitting at your excellency's table only because he eats twice as much as any other man."
The senator understood the truth of my argument, and asked the curate to bring me to dinner on the following day.
He found my practice even better than my theory, and I became his daily guest.
This man, who had given up everything in life except his own self, fostered an amorous inclination, in spite of his age and of his gout.
He was in love with a young girl named Therese Imer, the daughter of an actor residing near his mansion, her bedroom window being opposite to his own.
I was there when the old senator adjusted the lace at his cuffs and leaned toward the open window.
Across the narrow canal, Therese Imer stood framed in her window, violin poised, bow raised like a wand.
At seventeen, she was all brightness and design; even her tuning seemed a calculated seduction.
"She knows I watch," murmured Malipiero, his voice cracked but tender. "And still she plays."
She came every day with her mother, a retired actress who had married propriety as one marries a second husband: without love, but with income.
The mother wore black, clutched a rosary, and talked of salvation; yet she arranged the chairs so that her daughter and the senator were always two paces nearer than decency required and two paces farther than success desired.
As for Therese, she was a natural in that deliberate art of economy of favors by which a coquette proves that scarcity increases value.
She would allow the senator her hand, warm and obedient as long as it remained horizontal; the moment it tried to rise toward her lips it remembered confession.
"I cannot, signore," she would say with a sweet gravity. "I confessed this morning. God is still with me."
The old man coloured, and I confess his sudden rage frightened me.
Yet it was then that the miserable mother applauded her daughter's reserve and even ventured to lecture the elderly lover, who in his turn dared not refute her maxims.
Her maxims savoured either too much or too little of the Solarian Faith. I only knew that he was resisting a very strong inclination to hurl at her head any object he had at hand.
What a sight this was for a young man of fifteen like me, whom the old man admitted as the sole, silent witness of these erotic scenes!
When they left, the senator's rage changed into philosophy.
Compelled to answer him, and not knowing what to say, I ventured one day upon advising a marriage.
He struck me with amazement when he answered: "She says she cannot marry me for fear my family would hate her."
"Then make her the offer of a large sum of money, or a position." I suggested.
"She says that she would not, even for a crown, commit a deadly sin."
"In that case," I said, "you must either take her by storm, or banish her forever from your presence."
"I can do neither," he replied, looking at his hands. "Physical as well as moral strength is deficient in me."
"Kill her, then." I said lightly.
He gave a thin smile. "That will very likely be the case unless I die first."
"Indeed, I pity your excellency."
"Do you sometimes visit her?"
"No, for I might fall in love with her, and I would be miserable."
"You are right."
We drank our wine in silence, two philosophers divided only by half a century and one incurable desire.
Witnessing many such scenes, and taking part in many similar conversations, I became a special favourite with the old nobleman.
I was invited to his evening assemblies which were, as I have stated before, frequented by superannuated women and witty men.
He called it "the Academy of Experience."
"You will learn here," he said, "a science greater than Aristotle teaches and more useful than Latin—how to live among those who live by wit. First rule: you never speak unless questioned. Second: you never give an opinion; at your age, the world does not grant you one."
I faithfully followed his precepts, and obeyed his orders so well, that in a few days I had gained his esteem, and become the child of the house, as well as the favourite of all the ladies who visited him.
They delighted in the novelty of my gravity. To some I was a lamb in cassock; to others, a convenient listener who could be trusted not to repeat what he scarcely understood.
One would take my arm to the convent where her daughter studied, another would insist that I stay to taste her chocolate, and a third—pretending to instruct me in Latin hymns—preferred to test my memory of Venecian gossip.
I was never announced when I called; their servants had learned to let me pass as though I were a nephew or a confessor.
If too many days went by without my visit, I was scolded with maternal sweetness:
"What, Abate, have you forgotten us?"
And when I entered the apartments reserved for the young girls, they fled at first—only to return, laughing, once they saw it was merely I.
Their confidence was very charming to me.
At table, M. de Malipiero would fix his glass upon me and ask, "Well, philosopher, what spiritual harvest have you reaped today among these paragons of virtue?"
Then, before I could reply, he would raise a finger.
"Remember, boy: they are all endowed with the greatest virtue, and you would give everybody a bad opinion of yourself, if you ever breathed one word of disparagement to the high reputation they all enjoyed."
In this way he would inculcate in me the wise precept of reserve and discretion—the first of all social sciences, and the least academic.
It was at the senator's house that I made the acquaintance of Madame Manzoni, the wife of a notary public, of whom I shall have to speak very often.
This worthy lady inspired me with the deepest attachment, and she gave me the wisest advice.
Had I followed it, and profited by it, my life would not have been exposed to so many storms; it is true that in that case, my life would not be worth writing.
Among so many well-bred ladies, wrapped in silk and perfumed with the art of living, I began to suspect that piety alone was a poor ornament.
I wished to shine as they did.
My curls grew more elaborate, my cassock better cut, and the faint breath of jasmine that followed me into drawing rooms drew me a lot of compliments which fairly delighted me.
Vanity, I later learned, is the most innocent of vices until someone older notices you enjoying it.
My father confessor did.
He drew me aside one evening, "My dear child," the curate began, "your thoughts ought to dwell on pleasing God, not the world. Those curls—so elaborate—are a snare of the devil himself."
He condemned the perfume of my pomatum, warned that I risked excommunication if I continued such care of my hair, and concluded by quoting an oecumenical council: clericus qui nutrit comam, anathema sit.
I told him, with as much humility as I could borrow, that the Devil must be short of imagination if he had to work through hair.
I even cited a few fashionable abbés—perfumed four times as I, powdered, adored—who seemed in no way threatened by excommunication.
My pomade, I added, was jasmine, not amber. "Mine only charms," I said, "it does not intoxicate."
I added that I could not, much to my regret, obey him, and that if I had meant to live in slovenliness, I would have become a Capuchin and not an abbe.
He did not reply.
But three or four days later, while I still slept, he crept into my room with a pair of scissors and cut a revenge worthy of the Inquisition.
He sheared off all my front hair, from one ear to the other.
My brother François, in the adjoining room, saw him but did not interfere; he was delighted by my misfortune.
He wore a wig, and was very jealous of my beautiful head of hair.
Francois was envious through the whole of his life; yet he combined this feeling of envy with friendship; I never could understand him; but this vice of his, like my own vices, must by this time have died of old age.
After his great operation, the abbe left my room quietly.
I woke shortly afterward, felt a strange lightness on my brow, rose, and found the mirror.
The boy who stared back was shorn, uneven, half comic, half monstrous.
My rage and indignation rose to their highest pitch.
What wild schemes of revenge I conceived as I groaned over the shameful havoc wrought by that audacious priest!
At the noise I made, my grandmother hastened to my room, and amidst my brother's laughter, the kind old woman soothed me.
"My poor child," she whispered, smoothing what was left of my hair. "Had I foreseen his intention, I would never have let him in."
Her tenderness cooled the edge of my rage, but not its fire.
I dressed quickly, veiling the damage beneath a carnival mask, and went straight to Advocate Carrare—friend to Malipiero, and connoisseur of scandal.
He heard my story with widening eyes.
"Once," he said, "a family was ruined for cutting off a Sclavonian's moustache. And you"—he gestured to my shorn head—"have suffered a greater outrage. Give me your instructions and I will begin a criminal suit against the abbe that will make him tremble."
I agreed at once to bring the suit.
"Tell His Excellency," I added, "that I shall not appear in his salon until my hair grows back."