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Updated: June 12, 2025
"If I had only known sooner that I can fly," he thought. "I will teach Marcolina." Behind the gratings, the figures of women were moving hither and thither. They were nuns and yet they were all wearing secular dress. He knew it, though he could not really see them. He knew who they were.
Marcolina listened attentively like the others, but with the same expression as if she had been listening to someone reading aloud from an amusing narrative. Her face did not betray the remotest realization of the fact that the speaker was Casanova; that she was listening to the man who had had all these experiences and many more; that she was sitting beside the lover of a thousand women.
He went to the window beside Marcolina and looked out into the garden. He saw nothing but the wide greensward where the children were playing. It was surrounded by a close-set row of stately trees within the encompassing wall. "What lovely grounds," he said, turning to Olivo. "I should so like to have a look at them."
Casanova expressed his surprise that so charming a young lady should have an interest, certainly exceptional, in a dry and difficult subject. Marcolina replied that in her view the higher mathematics was the most imaginative of all the sciences; one might even say that its nature made it akin to the divine.
"What you speak of," said Amalia reddening, "is duty, and even pleasure; but it is not and never has been bliss." They did not walk to the end of the grass alley. Both seemed to shun the neighborhood of the greensward, where Marcolina and the children were playing. As if by common consent they retraced their steps, and, silent now, approached the house again.
"Nevertheless, beautiful and learned Marcolina, you will admit," answered Casanova promptly, "that even the Sophists were far from being such contemptible, foolish apprentices as your harsh criticism would imply. Let me give you a contemporary example. M. Voltaire's whole technique of thought and writing entitles us to describe him as an Arch-Sophist.
"Does anyone know," he asked, "whether we shall side with Spain or with France?" "I don't think Lieutenant Lorenzi will care a straw about that," suggested the Abbate. "All he wants is a chance to prove his military prowess." "He has done so already," said Amalia. "He was in the battle at Pavia three years ago." Marcolina said not a word. Casanova knew enough.
Then, returning to the body, he glanced at the fallen youth, lying stark on the turf in incomparable beauty. The silence was broken by a soft rustling, as the morning breeze stirred the tree-tops. "What shall I do?" Casanova asked himself. "Shall I summon aid? Olivo? Amalia? Marcolina? To what purpose? No one can bring him back to life."
On, on, through the maze of canals. Of course the gondolier knew where Marcolina was; but why was he, too, masked? That had not been the custom of old in Venice. Casanova wished to question him, but was afraid. Does a man become so cowardly when he grows old? Onward, ever onward. How huge Venice had grown during these five-and-twenty years!
They were worthy of one another, these two, Marcolina and Lorenzi, the woman philosopher and the officer. A splendid career lay before them. "Who will be Marcolina's next lover?" he thought questioningly. "The professor in Bologna in whose house she lives? Fool, fool! That is doubtless an old story. Who next? Olivo? The Abbate? Wherefore not?
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