I stood motionless, a handkerchief pressed against my nose as my blood made its habitual escape.
At the age of eight, I had already acquired the reputation of a condemned child. Physicians shook their heads, priests muttered about divine punishment, and distant relatives made polite remarks about cherishing me while I lasted.
I had every expectation of dying young, and frankly, so did everyone else.
Everyone, except my grandmother.
That day, she regarded me with an expression I would later recognize as resolve. Without a word, she took my small, slippery hand — stained red but held with dignity — and led me out of the house with all the secrecy of a conspirator.
A gondola carried us across the canal to Murano, half a league from Venicia. I dripped steadily throughout the journey. My grandmother held my hand tighter whenever I swayed, and said nothing.
We disembarked and wove through a series of alleys that diminished in charm with each turn, until civilization gave up entirely.
Before us stood a shack so pitiful I feared my mere touch might improve it. My grandmother knocked thrice in a deliberate rhythm. The door, perhaps eager to escape its hinges, opened at the slightest impact.
Inside awaited a darkness of theatrical proportions. At its center sat an elderly crone, surrounded by cats of various moral alignments. She caressed a black one with an air of authority. It did not purr so much as approve.
My grandmother released me and approached the witch. Their conversation was conducted in hushed tones, as though speaking too loudly might awaken God and invite His disapproval.
As for me, I observed nothing. My perpetual blood loss had rendered me indifferent to both life and architecture. Had the room burst into flames, I would likely have apologized for the inconvenience.
The witch rose suddenly. The feline assembly scattered, save for the black one, who stared at me with unnerving comprehension. She advanced, placed a hand upon my head, and murmured something undoubtedly significant. Still patting me as one might appraise livestock, she extended a hand toward my grandmother.
A silver ducat changed possession — my first recorded transaction.
My grandmother embraced me with unexpected tenderness. Her eyes conveyed both pity and expectation.
"Be good," she instructed.
An admirably vague command.
She left.
The witch, now sole mistress of my destiny, lifted me by the armpits with surprising delicacy.
"Do not be afraid," she cooed.
I was not. At that age and in my condition, I had not yet developed the imagination necessary for terror.
She placed me inside a wooden chest and closed the lid. Outside, the world erupted into shrieks, laughter, and sounds that could only be described as blasphemous gymnastics. The box shook as though possessed by ambition. I crouched inside like a philosopher resigned to observe rather than participate.
Eventually, the performance ceased. The lid opened. I was retrieved, stripped, and anointed with scented oils that would have been pleasant had they not been administered by ancient hands of dubious hygiene.
The witch alternated between caressing and consecrating me; which was which, I could not say.
Incense filled the air. She circled me, chanting in a language reserved for contracts with demons or politicians. At last, she stopped and examined me with professional satisfaction.
"You will receive a visitor tonight," she declared softly. "They will make you happy."
Then, in a tone that suggested legal enforcement, she added:
"But if you speak of this to anyone, your veins shall burst, and you will perish most horribly."
A reasonable condition.
Grandmother reappeared, and we returned home without anyone knowing about our strange excursion.
That night, I fell asleep at once, having decided that promised happiness could wait until morning. Yet I awoke some hours later to witness — or believe I witnessed — a most unusual intrusion.
A magnificent woman descended through the chimney to my room. Her attire was splendid, supported by hoops wide enough to rent as property. A jeweled crown rested upon her head, glowing with unapologetic expense.
She approached slowly, radiant yet gentle, and seated herself upon my bed. From her pocket she withdrew several small boxes and emptied their glittering contents upon me while whispering sentiments in a language no more comprehensible than the witch's. Her lips moved for some time — likely delivering a speech of great moral or metaphysical significance.
I, regrettably, understood none of it.
She bestowed a final benevolent gaze, kissed my forehead, and departed by the same unusual route.
I slept once more.
Come morning, my grandmother dressed me and said with solemn firmness:
"Be silent. If you speak of what you have seen, you will surely die."
I nodded. Obedience was my chief accomplishment in those days.
And yet — it is precisely because I was forbidden to speak of it that I have remembered it so vividly.
No one asked my opinion on the matter, of course. I was thought stupid and treated accordingly.
But perhaps, dear reader, you are curious:
What sort of child attracts witches, bleeding fits, and celestial visitors before reaching nine years of age?
Permit me, then, to start at the beginning — with the most scandalous mystery of all:
My origins.
Well then — since you insist on knowing how such a prodigy of misfortune came into being — I shall satisfy your curiosity.
I shall not weary you with a full catalogue of my ancestors. Like all respectable families, mine possessed its fair share of scandals, errors, and judicial encounters. Their history can be summed up succinctly: they lived, erred, and were forgiven by time. That is more than most can hope for.
Let us focus, instead, on my parents.
My father, Gaetan-Joseph-Jacques Casanova of Parma, abandoned his home at a young age for the noblest and least reliable of reasons — love. The object of his passion was an actress known as Fragoletta, a name that promises sweetness but, I suspect, delivered acidity.
Being poor and subject to emotions more theatrical than the stage itself, he chose the profession of dancing — a career path that offers both agility of foot and instability of income. Five years later, perhaps realizing he preferred speaking to leaping, he became an actor.
Actors, as a rule, love ardently and abandon politely. My father conformed to this tradition. Whether he left Fragoletta out of jealousy, boredom, or simple professional courtesy, I cannot say. But abandon her he did.
He joined a troupe in Venicia, taking residence opposite a reputable shoemaker named Jerome Farusi.
The shoemaker's daughter, Zanetta — sixteen, lovely, and impressionable — soon became the next recipient of paternal devotion.
She reciprocated with all the sincerity of youth, and together they reached the reasonable conclusion that elopement was their path to happiness.
They were correct.
No God-fearing family would willingly marry their daughter to an actor, and so they took the practical route: bypassing parental consent and appealing directly to ecclesiastical indifference.
Accompanied by two witnesses, they presented themselves to the Patriarch of Venicia, who — perhaps between one benediction and the next — made them man and wife.
The deed was done. My maternal grandfather died of grief shortly thereafter. My grandmother survived, but only because shock is rarely fatal when stretched over several months.
I arrived nine months later, on the 2nd of April, 1725. An unremarkable day elevated solely by my birth.
The following April, I was deposited into my grandmother's care like an inconvenient parcel.
My parents, having reestablished their artistic ambitions, departed for London. My mother, pregnant once more, made her stage debut. One must admire such dedication to performance.
But enough of them.
Let us return to the true subject of these memoirs — myself.
I remember nothing before the age of eight. No games. No lullabies. My past is a blank document written in invisible ink. They told me I was ill — slow, speechless, and stupid. I believed them; they seemed trustworthy.
Everything before the witch of Murano and the chimney-bearing queen is lost to me.
Their intervention — or my imagination — was the first stroke of ink upon the parchment of my memory.
After that peculiar journey, my bleeding did not cease entirely, but diminished politely day by day. More remarkably, my mind awakened.
Within a month, I learned to read, to the astonishment of all who had so recently considered me a decorative burden.
Looking back now, I would be a fool to attribute my recovery solely to that mystic farce. And yet — I cannot entirely deny it.
If faith can move mountains, it may also restrain nosebleeds. Fiction, when earnestly believed, behaves remarkably like medicine.
As for the celestial lady of the chimney, I have long assumed her a dream. Unless, of course, someone of good taste and too much time elected to masquerade for my benefit.
Either explanation is acceptable.
Let philosophers dispute whether enchantments exist. I maintain only this: remedies for grave illnesses are not always found in druggists' shops. Wonders occur daily, and our ignorance, more than our credulity, sustains them.
Perhaps that is why even the learned cannot fully flee superstition. They know too much of what they do not know.
For my part, I hold to a certainty that has guided me ever since:
Sorcerers, in truth, have never existed — except in the minds of fools willing to be deceived, and the hands of rogues clever enough to deceive them.
But enough philosophizing.
Three months after Murano, my nosebleeds had lessened and my soul had awakened — an inconvenient development, as self-awareness rarely leads to virtue.
I did not emerge from convalescence grateful, or cherubic, or determined to become the pride of my family.
No. I emerged observant. Calculating. Curious about consequences — particularly when they applied to others.
One afternoon, I wandered into my father's workshop. Light filtered through the half-shuttered windows, sluggish and dust-laden.
The air smelled of hot brass and masculine concentration. My father was hunched over his desk, elbow-deep in lenses and screws — playing God with glass, as was his habit.
Francois hovered beside him, wearing the expression of an altar boy at Mass. His reverence only worsened my mood.
Among the clutter, something caught my eye: a polished crystal, round and faceted like a bottled sunbeam.
I picked it up.
The world dissolved delightfully — a dozen shards of light, fractured faces, my own dilated eye staring back at me in splendid paranoia. It was beautiful. It wanted an owner worthy of it.
I obliged.
The crystal slid into my pocket with such effortless precision that I briefly entertained the notion that theft was my true vocation.
Silence followed. Suspense!
I turned back to the table as if deeply engrossed in the curvature of a screwdriver.
Minutes later, Father reached for the crystal. His fingers closed on air.
He did not sigh. He did not frown. He simply said, in that surgical tone fathers reserve for moments of intimate doom:
"Which one of you took it?"
Francois gulped like a fish yanked ashore. "Not I, Father!"
I echoed him with equal conviction. "Nor I."
My father turned to face us, his voice low but hard. "Don't make me search you. The one who lies will be thrashed."
Ah! A moral dilemma. Or rather, the vague outline of one. I briefly considered heroism — imagined confessing, returning the crystal, earning forgiveness. Then I imagined the stick. Heroism perished.
Instead, I took the more elegant route.
Feigning zeal, I began to "assist" the investigation. I opened drawers, peered beneath papers, flicked through books with righteous indignation.
Francois followed me with anxious eyes — poor lamb. I stepped beside him and with the gentlest sleight of hand, transferred the crystal into his pocket.
Perfect. Divine. Unnecessary.
Because I could have produced it from beneath a stool. From inside a shoe. From my own sleeve. But no — my burgeoning genius demanded spectacle, not resolution.
Losing patience, our father searched us. His hands moved fast, and when he reached into Francois' coat. The crystal clinked softly against his fingers — case closed.
The punishment was swift.
I watched it. I watched him—my brother's face, his shock, the sting of each blow.
And I said nothing.
But fool me! Three or four years later, I took it to my head to boast about my trick to him.
He never forgave me and always sought revenge against me whenever the opportunity arose.