With an education that should have ensured me an honourable place in the world, with some intelligence, wit, good literary and scientific knowledge, and endowed with those accidental physical qualities which are such a good passport into society, I found myself, at the age of twenty, the mean follower of a sublime art, in which, if great talent is rightly admired, mediocrity is as rightly despised.
I was compelled by poverty to become a member of a musical band. I could expect from such a post neither esteem nor consideration. I knew very well that I should be the laughing-stock of the people who had known me as a doctor of divinity, an ecclesiastic, and an officer, and had welcomed me in the highest society.
I saw my position clearly.
Yet contempt, the only thing I could not remain indifferent towards, never showed itself in a form solid enough for me to strike. No one gave me an insult plainly. And because the contempt remained vague, I defied it.
Besides, I had one consolation.
True contempt is due only to cowardly and base actions, and I was conscious that I had never been guilty of any.
As for public esteem, which I had once pursued so eagerly, my ambition slumbered for a time. I was my own master. That alone had sweetness.
I lived from day to day, enjoying my independence and troubling myself little about the future.
I felt that in my first profession, the Church, I could have succeeded only by a dint of hypocrisy.
I had no vocation. Without vocation, the cassock becomes a costume, and the altar a stage. I might perhaps have climbed high. I might even have seen the purple mantle on my shoulders. But what would that have changed?
The greatest dignities cannot silence a man's conscience. I would have been honoured by others and despised by myself, which is the poorest bargain ambition could ever make.
If, on the other hand, I had continued to seek fortune in a military career, which is surrounded by a halo of glory, but is otherwise the worst of professions for the constant self-abnegation, for the complete surrender of one's will which passive obedience demands, I should have required a patience to which I could not lay any claim, as every kind of injustice was revolting to me, and as I could not bear to feel myself dependent.
Besides, I believed then, as I believe still, that a man's profession, whatever it might be, ought to supply him with enough money to satisfy all his wants.
An officer's pay was too poor for me. My education had given me wants beyond those of common officers.
My violin, humble as it was, gave me bread.
By scraping it in the orchestra, I earned enough to live without asking help from anyone. That was not glory, but it was independence. And I have always thought that the man who can support himself is happy.
I grant that the profession was not brilliant.
I did not shine in it, and no one admired me for entering it. At first, certain feelings rose in me against my own degradation. I called them prejudices. Little by little, I silenced them.
It was not long before I started sharing all the habits of my degraded comrades.
When the play was over, I went with my companions to the drinking booth.
We often left it drunk, noisy, and ready for every kind of folly. From there we sometimes passed the night in houses of ill-fame.
If we found those places already occupied by other men, we forced them by violence to quit the premises. We cheated the poor women of the mean salary allowed them by law, after compelling them to yield to our brutality.
Our scandalous proceedings often exposed us to the greatest danger.
Often we spent the whole night wandering through Venice, inventing and carrying into execution the most impertinent, practical jokes.
One of our favourite pleasures was to unmoor the gondolas of patricians and let them drift at random along the canals, enjoying by anticipation all the curses that gondoliers would not fail to indulge in.
We would rouse up hurriedly, in the middle of the night, an honest midwife, telling her to hasten to Madame So-and-so, who, not being even pregnant, was sure to tell her she was a fool when she called at the house.
We played the same trick on physicians. Many a grave doctor, half dressed and still full of sleep, was sent to the house of a nobleman enjoying perfect health.
Priests fared no better.
We sent them to carry the last sacraments to married men peacefully asleep beside their wives, with no thought of extreme unction.
We were in the habit of cutting the wires of the bells in every house, and if we chanced to find a gate open, we slipped inside, climbed the stairs in the dark, and frighten the sleeping inmates by shouting loudly that the house door was not closed. Then we went down again with as much noise as possible and left the gate wide open behind us.
One very dark night, we formed a plan to overturn the great marble table in St. Angelo's Square.
That table enjoyed a kind of public reverence. It was said that, during the days of the League of Cambrai, the commissaries of the Republic had used it to pay the bounty to recruits who enlisted under the banner of St. Mark. That was enough to make it sacred in the eyes of the people, and therefore tempting in ours.
Whenever we managed to enter a church tower, we rang the alarm bell as if a fire had broken out. The whole parish would wake in terror, windows would open, voices would cry in the dark, and we would laugh like devils above them.
We did worse.
Before leaving, we always cut the bell ropes, so that in the morning the churchwardens could not summon the faithful to early mass.
Sometimes we crossed a canal, each in a different gondola, and ran away the moment we landed, without paying. The gondoliers, cheated and furious, would leap after us, shouting threats into the night while we vanished through alleys we knew better than they did.
Soon the whole city was full of complaints.
We laughed at the police, who searched in vain for the disturbers of public peace. Yet our laughter had prudence in it. We took great care not to be recognized, for if the Council of Ten had discovered us, we stood a very fair chance of being sent to practice rowing at its expense.
We were seven, and sometimes eight, because, being much attached to my brother Francois, I gave him a share now and then in our nocturnal orgies.
But at last fear put a stop to our criminal jokes, which in those days I used to call only the frolics of young men.
This is the amusing adventure which closed our exploits.
In each of the seventy-two parishes of Venice there is a large public house called a magazzino.
It remains open all night, and wine is sold there cheaper than in ordinary taverns. One may also eat there, though the food must be bought from the pork butcher nearby, who alone has the right to supply it and keeps his shop open all night for that purpose.
The pork butcher is usually a very poor cook, but as he is cheap, poor people are willingly satisfied with him, and these resorts are considered very useful to the lower class.
Nobles, merchants, even workmen in good circumstances, are never seen in the 'magazzino', for cleanliness is not exactly worshipped in such places.
Still, some of them have private rooms, furnished with a table and benches, where a respectable family, or a few friends may enjoy themselves decently enough.
It was during the Carnival of 1745, after midnight.
The eight of us were roaming through the city in masks, searching for some new mischief. We entered the magazzino of the parish of Santa Croce to drink.
The public room was empty.
In one of the private chambers, however, we found three men sitting quietly with a young and pretty woman. They were drinking their wine and conversing in peace.
Our chief was a Venetian nobleman of the Balbi family.
He looked in, then turned to us.
"It would be a good joke," he said, "to carry off those three blockheads, and to keep the pretty woman in our possession.""
He explained his plan at once.
Masked as we were, we entered the room, Balbi leading us. The four guests looked up, surprised. Their surprise became terror when Balbi spoke in a voice worthy of the Council itself.
"Under penalty of death, and by order of the Council of Ten, I command you to follow us immediately, without making the slightest noise; as to you, my good woman, you need not be frightened, you will be escorted to your house."
When he had finished his speech, two of us got hold of the woman to take her where our chief had arranged beforehand, and the others seized the three poor fellows, who were trembling all over, and had not the slightest idea of opposing any resistance.
The waiter of the magazzino came to be paid, and our chief gave him what was due, enjoining silence under penalty of death.
We led our three prisoners to a large boat.
Balbi placed himself at the stern, ordered the boatman to stand at the bow, and told him not to ask where we were going. He would steer.
None of us knew where he wanted to take the three poor devils.
He guided the boat along the canal, left it, took several turns, and after a quarter of an hour brought us to San Giorgio. There he landed the prisoners.
They found themselves free.
Their relief was so great that they did not even think of asking who had arrested them, judged them, transported them, and pardoned them in the space of fifteen minutes.
We then ordered the boatman to take us to Santa Ginevra. We landed there after paying him.
We proceed at once to Palombo Square, where my brother and another of our band were waiting for us with our lovely prisoner, who was crying.
"Do not weep, my beauty," Balbi said, "we will not hurt you. We intend only to take some refreshment at the Rialto, and then we will take you home in safety."
"Where is my husband?"
"Never fear; you shall see him again to-morrow."
Comforted by that promise, and as gentle as a lamb, she followed us to the Two Swords.
We ordered a good fire in a private room. Food and wine were brought. Then we dismissed the waiter and found ourselves alone.
We took off our masks, and the sight of eight young, healthy faces seemed to please the beauty we had so unceremoniously carried off.
We soon managed to reconcile her to her fate by the gallantry of our proceedings; encouraged by a good supper and by the stimulus of wine, prepared by our compliments and by a few kisses, she realized what is in store for her, and did not seem to have any unconquerable objection.
Our chief, as a matter of right, claimed the privilege of opening the ball; and by dint of sweet words he overcame the very natural repugnance she felt at consummating the sacrifice in so numerous company.
She, doubtless, thought the offering agreeable, for, when I presented myself as the priest appointed to sacrifice a second time to the god of love, she received me almost with gratitude, and she could not conceal her joy when she found out that she was destined to make us all happy.
My brother Francois alone exempted himself from paying the tribute, saying that he was ill, the only excuse which could render his refusal valid, for we had established as a law that every member of our society was bound to do whatever was done by the others.
After that fine exploit, we put on our masks, and, the bill being paid, escorted the happy victim to Saint Job, where she lived, and did not leave her till we had seen her safe in her house, and the street door closed.
My readers may imagine whether we felt inclined to laugh when the charming creature bade us good night, thanking us all with perfect good faith!