I returned to Venecia to find my grandmother failing.
Her sickroom altered my life at once.
I kept to her side, fetching whatever eased her breath, speaking only when she asked, and sleeping in a chair by the door, half-waking at every change in her breathing.
She slipped away between one dawn and the next.
She was unable to leave me anything, for during her life she had given me all she could.
Her death broke the last pattern of my life and forced me into another.
A month later my mother wrote from afar that she saw no reason to keep the house, since there was no likelihood of her return to Venecia.
She had informed Abbe Grimani; I was to obey him in all things.
Grimani had orders to sell the furniture and to place us -myself, my brothers, my sister- in a respectable boarding house.
I visited him at once to assure him of my perfect disposition to obey his commands.
The rent was paid until year's end. The furniture would be sold when the term expired.
Knowing this, I felt no scruple in thinning the inventory.
Linen went first, then the finer china, then the tapestries.
By the time I reached the mirrors and beds, I had already accepted that blame would come.
But it was my father's inheritance, to which my mother had no claim whatever, and, as to my brothers, there was plenty of time before any explanation could take place between us.
Four months passed before another letter arrived, this time from Warsaw, and with one enclosed. My mother wrote:
My dear son, I have made here the acquaintance of a learned Minim friar, a Calabrian by birth, whose great qualities have made me think of you every time he has honoured me with a visit. A year ago I told him that I had a son who was preparing himself for the Church, but that I had not the means of keeping him during his studies, and he promised that my son would become his own child, if I could obtain for him from the queen a bishopric in his native country, and he added that it would be very easy to succeed if I could induce the sovereign to recommend him to her daughter, the queen of Naples.
Full of trust in the Almighty, I threw myself at the feet of her majesty, who granted me her gracious protection. She wrote to her daughter, and the worthy friar has been appointed by the Pope to the bishopric of Monterano. Faithful to his promise, the good bishop will take you with him about the middle of next year, as he passes through Venecia to reach Calabria. He informs you himself of his intentions in the enclosed letter. Answer him immediately, my dear son, and forward your letter to me; I will deliver it to the bishop. He will pave your way to the highest dignities of the Church, and you may imagine my consolation if, in some twenty or thirty years, I had the happiness of seeing you a bishop, at least! Until his arrival, M. Grimani will take care of you. I give you my blessing, and I am, my dear child, etc., etc.
The bishop's letter was written in Latin, and was only a repetition of my mother's.
It was full of unction, and informed me he would tarry only three days in Venecia.
I answered according to my mother's wishes, but those two letters had turned my brain.
I saw my fortune rising like a sun over the horizon.
I rehearsed my farewell to Venecia before packing a single shirt.
"Farewell Venecia," I told the canals. "The days for vanity are gone by, and in the future, I will only think of a great, of a substantial career!"
Grimani, delighted, congratulated me on my good luck and assured me he would find proper lodging for my interim months.
With the new year I was to enter the boarding house and await the bishop's arrival.
de Malipiero watched my preparations with a satisfaction he did not trouble to hide.
In Venecia I had been sliding, day by day, into easy pleasures and softer company; he had warned me often enough that I was wasting the only coin that does not return, time.
To see me ready to leave at last, and to hear me accept my new fate without complaint, pleased him a lot.
He chose that evening to give me a lesson I have never forgotten.
"The Stoics," he began, "had a precept that has been chewed into tastelessness: sequere Deum, follow God. People repeat it without knowing what it demands. It means only this: give yourself up to whatever fate offers to you, provided you do not feel an invincible repugnance to accept it."
He paced as he spoke, fingers clasped behind his back, his robe whispering over the tiles.
"That," he added, "is the genius of Socrates: saepe revocans, raro impellens -often recalling you from folly, rarely driving you forward. And from the same source come those words you like to quote, fata viam inveniunt -fate finds a road."
de Malipiero's science was embodied in that very lesson, for he had obtained his knowledge by the study of only one book, the book of man.
However, as if it were to give me the proof that perfection does not exist, and that there is a bad side as well as a good one to everything.
A certain adventure happened to me a month afterwards which, although I was following his own maxims, cost me the loss of his friendship, and which certainly did not teach me anything.
The senator fancied that fortune marked her favourites in their youth.
Certain lines in a face, a way of holding the eyes, a liveliness in the mouth -these, he said, were signs that destiny meant to be generous.
When he thought he had discovered such marks, he took the owner in hand and trained him or her to help fortune along.
"A remedy," he liked to say, "turns to poison in a fool's hands; and a poison, given by a learned man, can be the best of remedies."
In my time he had three such favourites.
One was myself.
The second was Thérèse Imer, whom the reader already knows.
The third was the daughter of a boatman, Gardela -a girl three years younger than I, with the prettiest and most fascinating countenance.
To "assist fortune" in her case, the speculative old man made her learn dancing.
"The ball," he would remark, "never reaches the pocket unless someone gives it a push."
Fortune answered his push.
Under the name of Augusta, she became celebrated at Stuttgart, and in 1757 she was the favourite mistress of the Duke of Württemberg.
She was a most charming woman.
The last time I saw her was in Venecia; two years later she was dead, and her husband, Michel de l'Agata, poisoned himself a short time after her death.
One afternoon we three -Thérèse, little Gardela, and I- had dined with him as usual.
After the meal, he went off to his siesta, leaving us in the outer room.
Shortly afterwards Gardela departed for her dancing lesson, and I remained alone with Thérèse.
I admired her; I had never yet tried to turn admiration into anything else.
We sat at a table side by side, our backs toward the door of the adjoining room where we supposed the senator deeply asleep.
Conversation strayed -as it often does between idle young people- to the differences between boys and girls.
Curiosity, in us, was more vivid than discretion.
We set about examining those differences with a frankness which left little to theory.
We had reached the most instructive point in our study when I felt a violent blow across my shoulders.
A second followed.
A third would have come, and many more, if I had not taken to my heels.
I ran out bareheaded, without cloak, and did not stop until I had reached home, my back burning and my curiosity cured for the day.
Less than a quarter of an hour later the senator's old housekeeper appeared with my hat and cloak and a letter.
In it his excellency ordered me never again to show my face in his house.
I answered at once:
"You have struck me while you were the slave of your anger; you cannot therefore boast of having given me a lesson, and I have not learned anything. To forgive you I must forget that you are a man of great wisdom, and I can never forget it."
Perhaps the senator was right not to enjoy the spectacle we offered him, but wisdom deserted him the moment he let anger drive his hand.
Servants see everything in Venecia; his needed only an hour to embroider the story, and by evening my "exile" had become a comedy passed from kitchen to kitchen.
The whole city laughed.
Thérèse later told me he never dared reproach her. She, in turn, did not dare ask forgiveness for me.
The time for leaving my father's house drew near.
One fine morning a man of about forty presented himself: black wig pulled low, scarlet cloak flung over his shoulders, skin the colour of baked earth.
He handed me a letter from Abbe Grimani, instructing me to deliver to the bearer all the furniture listed in the inventory of which I kept a copy.
Inventory in hand, I walked him through the rooms, pointing out each item as we came to it.
Whenever we reached a place where a chair, a mirror, or a tapestry ought to have stood and did not, I merely said I had no idea where it might be at present.
Those particular pieces had already taken air under my guidance and were never likely to return.
The fellow's manner grew harsh.
Raising his voice, he declared he must know what I had done with the missing goods.
His tone displeased me more than his question.
"I have nothing to say to you," I told him, "and you have nothing to say in this house."
He blustered again, louder.
I stepped toward him and advised him to take himself off as quickly as possible.
And I gave him that piece of advice in such a way as to prove to him that, at home, I knew I was the more powerful of the two.