What Casanova Told Me Read Free Page B

provoked their sniggering smiles but I did my best not to feel put upon.
    What I found far more unsettling than the silly Macaronis, what riveted me to such a degree that I could not take my eyes off her, was an enormous old woman in a towering, beribboned wig, garnished with every likeness imaginable from the natural world—strawberries and butterflies, small, stuffed birds—even little wire-framed portraits of what may have been sons or husbands woven into her hair. She sat on a bench a few feet away moaning softly and holding her jaw.
    The young man sitting next to her—a chubby, excitable-looking fellow whose ponytail was encased in a silk wig bag—was teasing the old woman, pulling ornaments out of her hair and holding them up for the passengers standing nearby to see. First, a small locket, next an artificial rosebud, and now a miniature portrait of a sweetly smiling fair-haired girl. The old woman seemed unaware, holding her head and groaning, when suddenly, with a happy cry, the young man plucked something from the curls close to the great dame’s ear. Turning to me, he mouthed a foreign word—German, I believe, so I could not understand the joke he was trying to share. Then he thrust the thing he wanted me to see under the old woman’s petticoat.
    “You beast! Leave Finette alone!” The old dame spoke French in a low, gravelly voice. She began to fuss about her crinoline, and a fuzzy grey snout poked through the lace of its hem. A small, excited fox terrier bounded towards me and pressed itself against my skirt. I patted the little dog and it gazed up at me lovingly. I picked it up and brought it to the old woman and she bent over the dog, smiling: “Ah, she likes you,
ma pauvre!”
    As the old woman caressed her dog the sunlight caught the ornaments on her wig and I saw that it was crawling with beetles. Their veined wings glistened as if the bugs were part of the stupendous adornment she had contrived on her person. I had no time to feel shocked, for at that moment the barge rounded a marshy curve in the Brenta and for the first time Father and I saw the city of Venice, perched like a fairy-tale kingdom on the arc of the horizon. Holding up her little dog so it could see the legendary city, the old dame exhaled such a sigh of longing that I too felt my breathing cease. Then the Brenta curved back on itself, shutting out Venice and leaving us with the silvery glints of river water flowing to the sea.
    I excused myself and went off to take my guidebook out of my valise. Before we left Paris, Father had bought me the latest edition of
The Grand Tourist’s Guide to the Picturesque Landscapes of Europe
by Sir Thomas Peabody, and
Exile: The Royal Education
, a travel panegyric by an anonymous author who claimed that the exile of Charles II was an unexpected boon for England’s young monarch. I preferred Peabody. I turned to the section on the Brenta and was pleased to find the name for the pretty barges on the canal, done up like little houses. On the roofs of these
burchielli
, men and women sat or stood, drinking and chatting, the women carrying little fans and parasols. I overheard one of the Macaronis tell Father the passengers were Venetian nobles sailing to their summer houses to escape General Bonaparte. The French army has invaded Northern Italy and is encouraging peasants and nobles alike to rebel against the Republic of Venice, Father says. But he claims the French are our allies, so we have nothing to fear.
    When the public barge stopped for more passengers, Father and I disembarked to stretch our legs, leaving Francis on board. Moments later, near a small palace in the Palladio style, we met the old woman and her young companion. They were sitting on a bench with a group of pilgrims in capes and round hats. One of the pilgrims was mending his clothes. As we approached, the old woman and her friend rose, and I saw she stood almost a head higher than the young man. She looked sleepy now, almost