I was never able to kill her as I couldn’t see and as I was too poor to pay someone to do it. If, before losing Benedetto Carpi, my Venetian jailer, I had asked him to set down the exact location of my dungeon cell, I could have recognized the treasury, acknowledged my crime, and returned to Venice when Napoleon abolished the republic there.

“But now, never mind my blindness, let’s be off to Venice! I will find the prison door, I will see the gold through the walls, I will sense it beneath the waters that flow above it. The events that have overthrown Venice’s powers are such that the secret of the treasure trove must have died with Vendramino, Bianca’s brother, a doge who I had hoped would arrange my peace with the Council of Ten. I sent missives to the First Consul, I proposed a treaty with the Austrian emperor—they all dismissed me as a madman! Come now, let us leave for Venice: We leave as beggars and we’ll return as princes! We’ll buy back my properties and you will be my heir, the Prince of Varese!”

Dazzled by this pronouncement, which in my imagination expanded into the dimensions of a poem, I gazed at the sight of his white head, and there before the dark water of the Bastille moats, water as still as that in the Venice canals, I made no answer. Facino Cane must surely have felt that I was judging him, as everyone else had done, with disdainful pity, for he waved his hand in a gesture that evoked all the philosophy of despair. The tale must have carried him back to his happy times in Venice; he seized his clarinet and dolefully played a Venetian song, a barcarolle for which he drew once more on his first talent, the talent of a patrician in love. It was something like the psalm “Super flumina Babylonis.” My eyes filled with tears. If a few late-night strollers happened along boulevard Bourdon just then, they probably stopped to listen to that ultimate prayer of the exile, the last longing for a lost name, touched with the memory of Bianca. But soon gold took the upper hand again, and that fateful passion stamped out the youthful gleam.

“That treasure-house,” he whispered, “I can still see it, bright as a dream. I’m strolling through it, the diamonds sparkle, I am not so blind as you think: Gold and diamonds light my night, the night of the last Facino Cane—for my title will pass to the Memmi clan. Ah, Lord! The murderer’s punishment has begun so very early! Ave Maria . . .”

He recited a few prayers that I did not hear.

“We’ll go to Venice!” I cried when he stood up.

“So I have found myself the right man!” he exclaimed, his face aflame.

I gave him my arm and took him home. He shook my hand at the door of the Quinze-Vingts, just as several people from the wedding party passed by on their way home, shouting and carousing their heads off.

“Shall we leave tomorrow?” asked the old man.

“As soon as we’ve put together some money.”

“But we can go on foot, I’ll beg alms along the way . . . I’m sturdy, and a person is young when he sees gold ahead.”

Facino Cane died during the winter, after a two-month illness. The poor man had suffered a bad cold.

Paris, March 1836
Translated by Linda Asher

ANOTHER STUDY OF WOMANKIND

To Léon Gozlan, in sincere literary fellowship

THERE are two very different parties to be found at nearly every Parisian ball or rout. First the official party, peopled by its invitees, a fine crowd of very bored people. Everyone poses for his neighbor. Most of the young women have come solely for the sake of one person. Once each is satisfied that for this person she is the most beautiful woman of all, and that a few others have formed the same opinion, then—after exchanging a few trivial sentences (“Will you be leaving soon for La Crampade?” “Didn’t Madame de Portenduère sing beautifully!” “Who is that little woman with so many diamonds?”) or tossing out a handful of epigrammatic remarks of the sort that cause fleeting pleasure and lasting wounds—the crowd thins, the indifferent guests go on their way, the candles burn down into their rings. But with this the mistress of the house holds back a few artists, people of good cheer, friends, saying, “Stay, we’re having a late supper among ourselves.” They gather in the little drawing room. Here the second, true party begins, a party in which, as under the ancien régime, everyone hears what is said, in which the conversation is shared in by all, in which each is obliged to display his wit and contribute to the public amusement. All is in high relief; openhearted laughter replaces the starchy airs that, in society, dull the prettiest faces. In short, where the rout ends, pleasure begins. The rout, that dreary review of fashionable fineries, that parade of well-dressed self-infatuations, is one of those English inventions currently mechanifying the other nations. England seems determined to see the entire world bored just as she is, and just as bored as she. This second party is thus, in France, in a few houses, a welcome affirmation of the spirit that was once ours in this ebullient land. But alas, few houses thus affirm, and for a very simple reason: If people rarely take part in these suppers today, it is because there have never been, under any regime, fewer people settled, established, and secure than under the reign of Louis Philippe, in which the Revolution has begun a second time, legally.