A Venetian Affair (24 page)

The day after the strange visit by Castelbajac and Reine Demay, Maisonneuve called on Giustiniana at the Hôtel de Hollande. There was nothing unusual about his appearance, as he often came by on behalf of La Pouplinière, whether on business related to the marriage or simply to drop off a gift: theater tickets, a piece of jewelry, a basket of fruit for the family, a fresh catch of fish on a Friday. This time, however, he cut the civilities to a minimum and went straight to Giustiniana’s room. “He told me of the slander being thrown at me,” she wrote to Andrea. “Laughing a little, and using as much grace as he possibly could, he asked me if I would allow him to put his hand on my belly. I was happy to oblige him, and he begged to be forgiven a thousand times even as he cursed the slanderers.”

Giustiniana said very little in her letters to Andrea about what was actually going on behind the scenes. She told him about the threats, the slanderous attacks, but she was never very specific; as she explained it, it was all part of a vague and mysterious plot set up against her by La Pouplinière’s relatives. But she did tell Andrea about the bizarre Maisonneuve episode—indeed, she told other people as well, as if she had a particular interest in advertising both the motive and the outcome of his visit. How could she possibly have been in a state of advanced pregnancy, she seemed to be implying, if La Pouplinière’s own secretary had put his hand to her belly and had pronounced it to be flat? But then it was probably a more cursory inspection than she was letting on, for even if her pregnancy was not very visible it is hard to imagine Maisonneuve taking a close look and still walking away convinced that everything was normal.

Whatever Castelbajac’s objective was—a straightforward pay-off from La Pouplinière’s relations, hush money from La Pouplinière himself, extortion money from Casanova, or perhaps all three—his nefarious scheme quickly backfired. After he and Reine Demay brought formal charges against Casanova and Giustiniana for demanding an abortion, La Pouplinière had Castelbajac followed and soon found out that he was indeed plotting with his relatives. The
fermier général
immediately brought a countercharge against the marquis and the midwife. Castelbajac, Demay, La Pouplinière, Casanova—all but Giustiniana—gave sworn testimony to the police during the legal proceedings in March, even as the wedding preparations moved rapidly forward. The three inquiring officers were inclined to believe that extortion was indeed the prime motive behind the initial charges brought by Castelbajac and Demay. “Threats, anonymous letters, paid agents: nothing was spared to give [La Pouplinière] the sorriest impression of me. Thank God they have failed and all their plots were uncovered,” Giustiniana assured Andrea, who was finding the situation more and more confusing.

The case against Casanova and Giustiniana, however, was not closed. As a precautionary measure, La Pouplinière instructed his new confidant, the Abbé de La Coste, to write up a memorandum “on the whole Miss Wynne affair,”
⁸
a copy of which was sent to Choiseul, the increasingly powerful minister of foreign affairs who had granted the Wynnes an extension of their stay. Gossip about Giustiniana’s pregnancy was still rife, and La Pouplinière evidently wanted to set the record straight so as not to jeopardize her application for naturalization.

The immediate threat of a trial had receded but there was little relief in sight for Giustiniana. By the end of March she was nearing the eighth month of her pregnancy. The quack brews Casanova was secretly administering to her were having no effect. And though she was still unusually thin, the daily task of hiding her condition was becoming more and more involved. She had to be alone when she dressed and undressed. She had to be careful not to raise suspicions with her secretive behavior. She had to choose with care the clothes best suited to camouflage her growing silhouette. Hardest of all was the constant, searing anxiety that her mother, who apparently was not aware of the rumor, might find out. Giustiniana became so desperate to dislodge the child inside her that she did not balk when Casanova came to her with a most outlandish proposition.

Casanova’s principal benefactress at the time was the Marquise d’Urfé, a rich Parisian lady obsessed with the occult. He had managed to convince her he had special divining powers—he could read numbers, he was in touch with fundamental forces, he knew the secrets of the cabbala. He often dined alone with the marquise and cultivated her credulousness to his material advantage. It was said that she was at least partly responsible for his lavish lifestyle in Petite Pologne. One evening, in the penumbra of Mme d’Urfé’s drawing room, he asked her whether she knew the alchemistical formula to induce an abortion. She answered that Paracelsus’s
aroma philosophorum,
better known to his adepts by the contraction “aroph,” was an infallible remedy.

Aroph was indeed a well-known medicament among alchemists of the sixteenth and seventeenth century, and one finds several formulas for the potion in their writings. The basic ingredient was powdered saffron, which was believed to induce menstruation, and it was usually mixed with a paste of honey and myrrh. Casanova read all he could find on aroph in Paracelsus and in the
Elementa
Chemiae
of the Dutch physician Herman Boerhaave. The special brew, he learned, was not only supposed to bring on menstruation but also to loosen the outer rim of the womb, thereby facilitating the discharge of the fetus. It was to be applied at the top end of a cylinder and inserted “into [the] vagina in such a way as to stimulate the round piece of flesh at the top of her such-and-such.”
⁹
This was to be done three or four times a day for a week. Casanova burst out laughing when he read these careful instructions.

He went over to the Hôtel de Hollande and told Giustiniana of his latest discovery. In a typically Casanovian gesture, he supplied an addition of his own to the list of instructions: in order to make the potion more effective, it was necessary to mix it with freshly ejaculated semen. Giustiniana gave him a slanted look and asked if he was joking. Not at all: he would show her the manuscripts. She told him not to bother—she was hardly in the mood for reading the arcane theories of some alchemist she had never heard of.

Casanova writes that Giustiniana “was very intelligent [but] the candour of her soul prevented her from suspecting a fraud.”
¹⁰
It seems more likely that she was simply at the end of her tether. They agreed to meet secretly in the garret of the Hôtel de Hollande when the rest of the lodgers had retired. In the meantime Casanova enlisted the help of the kitchen boy and Giustiniana’s chambermaid, Magdeleine (he had discovered they had been using the garret for their private amusement and blackmailed them into becoming his accomplices). A mattress was taken upstairs as well as blankets and pillows. On the appointed night, Casanova let himself into the hotel through a back door and made his way up to the rudimentary bedchamber carrying his alchemist’s paraphernalia. Shortly after eleven Giustiniana joined him upstairs. There were no preliminaries. The mood was very businesslike: “In our utter seriousness we appeared to be a surgeon getting ready to perform an operation and the patient who submits to it. [Giustiniana] was the operating surgeon. She sets the open box at her right then lies down on her back, and, spreading her thighs and raising her knees, arches her body; at the same time, by the light of the candle, which I am holding in my left hand, she puts a little crown of
aroph
on the head of the being who is to convey it to the orifice where the amalgamation is to be accomplished. . . . We neither laughed nor felt any desire to laugh, so engrossed were we in our roles. After the insertion was completed, the timid [Giustiniana] blew out the candle.”
¹¹

Needless to say, the magic potion did not work, on that night or the few others in which they met in the garret. In fact, Casanova never even experimented with aroph: unbeknown to Giustiniana, he brought along whatever homemade concoction he could put together at Cracovie en Bel Air before coming into town for his nocturnal exercises—usually just plain honey. Faced with yet another failure, Giustiniana finally gave up the idea of ridding herself of the fetus and instead turned her attention to finding a suitable place where she could deliver the baby clandestinely. It was a common enough practice. She had heard there were convents where young pregnant women could go. It was a matter of finding a friendly place where she could feel comfortable and where her secret would be kept safe.

By the end of March the search had become frantic. The pressure from La Pouplinière was becoming unbearable. Giustiniana’s naturalization papers, signed by Louis XV, had arrived from Versailles.
¹²
The Venetian documents were also ready and on their way to Paris. There was nothing to prevent the marriage from going ahead as planned in mid-April. Even the official portrait was near completion. And the impatient
fermier général
kept asking Giustiniana to set up an appointment with his dressmakers— which gave her a nightmarish vision of a busy band of seamstresses laying their searching hands all over her.

This time Casanova came through for her. He turned for advice to the Countess du Rumain, a well-connected Parisian
grande
dame
“who was more beautiful than pretty . . . and was loved for the sweetness of her character.”
¹³
The countess was intrigued by Casanova’s divinatory powers (later on she too became an adept of the “abstruse sciences”), but she was also a practical woman and enjoyed using her influence to help others.

Casanova told the Countess du Rumain the whole story. At the end, he asked if she knew of a safe refuge where Giustiniana could deliver the baby. The countess wasted no time. She contacted another friend, Madame de Mérinville, who was evidently quite experienced in such matters, and begged her to receive Giustiniana as soon as possible as her pregnancy was already so advanced. The financial and logistical arrangements were worked out by the countess, Madame de Mérinville, and Casanova, who claimed he gave Giustiniana 200 louis to pay for transportation and expenses during her stay at the convent. Within a few days everything was ready. La Pouplinière’s dressmakers visited Giustiniana at the Hôtel de Hollande on April 3 and discussed various ideas for her wedding trousseau. It was a brief, preliminary meeting—no searching hands. Early the following morning she made her escape to the convent in Conflans.

Giustiniana left two letters behind—one for her mother and one for La Pouplinière. To both she wrote that she had been forced into hiding because of the constant threats she kept receiving by those who opposed the marriage. It was not just her reputation that was being sullied; she feared for her life. Under such circumstances she could not possibly go ahead with the marriage, and she would not reveal her hiding place until it had been called off. To mislead the police, she said she was staying within the city of Paris.

As Giustiniana settled into her spare room at the convent, fear and confusion took over at the Hôtel de Hollande. When Mrs. Anna finished reading Giustiniana’s letter, she immediately suspected Casanova of kidnapping her daughter. Ambassador Erizzo, who had admonished the Wynnes against having anything to do with him, was also convinced of Casanova’s involvement. Casanova, of course, feigned complete ignorance about Giustiniana’s whereabouts. In fact, he even appeared for dinner at the Hôtel de Hollande the very day of her disappearance, asking with a perfectly straight face why everyone was wearing such a sullen expression and whether Giustiniana was upstairs in her room. The next day Mrs. Anna drove out to Petite Pologne with Farsetti and begged Casanova to tell her where her daughter was. Again he assured her he didn’t have a clue and promised he would do all he could to help find her. A few days later Mrs. Anna, with the full blessing of Ambassador Erizzo, sued Casanova for conspiring to kidnap her daughter.

Soon Giustiniana was able to reassure her family. She befriended the uncle of Mother Eustachia’s chambermaid, who worked at the convent, and paid him to take her letters into town and deliver them to another intermediary, a man she referred to as “the Savoyard,” who posted the sealed envelopes at different mailboxes around Paris. Giustiniana assured Mrs. Anna and her siblings that she was well but insisted she would not reveal her hideout until she was sure she would not have to marry La Pouplinière. Communicating with Casanova was easier: she sent her letters for him directly to Countess du Rumain via Mother Eustachia. She was deeply grateful to him and to his lady friend, she wrote. She had found peace at the convent and the abbess was very kind. There were books to read and plenty of time to rest, though she complained that the absolute confinement imposed by Mother Eustachia weighed on her spirits at times.

In Paris, meanwhile, the inquiry into the ill-fated trip to Reine Demay’s was slowly moving forward. Antoine Raymond de Sartine—a rising star in the city’s judiciary, whom Louis XV would soon name chief of police—summoned Casanova for an informal talk at his private home. He told him he was going to have to answer the very serious charge of having solicited Demay to perform an abortion on Giustiniana. But if he was innocent, he should tell him the whole truth—tell him why Giustiniana had disappeared and where—and the entire matter would be quickly settled. Casanova assured Sartine that the charges were false. “Alas, Monsieur, there is no question of abortion; other reasons prevent her from returning to her family. But I cannot tell you more without a certain person’s consent, which I shall try to obtain.”
¹⁴

Casanova realized that his vague explanations had not convinced the magistrate and he would soon find himself in very serious trouble unless he told him the truth about why Giustiniana had run away. But he needed to have Countess du Rumain’s permission. He went to her the next day, and, pragmatist that she was, she called on Sartine and told him the whole story herself. Giustiniana was indeed pregnant, she explained, but no abortion had been performed; she was now waiting to deliver in a convent near Paris and would go back to her mother after the baby was born.