house upon whom he could vent
his fury; and he could not fail to realize the utter absurdity of a
half-formed idea that Marcolina must be in some way contributory to the
intolerable shame which had been put upon him.

As soon as he was in some degree once more master of himself, his first
thought was to take revenge upon the scoundrels who had believed that he
could be hired as a police spy. He would return to Venice in disguise,
and would exert all his cunning to compass the death of these
wretches--or at least of whomever it was that had conceived the
despicable design.

Was Bragadino the prime culprit? Why not? An old man so lost to all
sense of shame that he had dared to write such a letter to Casanova; a
dotard who could actually believe that Casanova, whom he had personally
known, would set his hand to this ignominious task. He no longer knew
Casanova! Nor did anyone know him, in Venice or elsewhere. But people
should learn to know him once more.

It was true that he was no longer young enough or handsome enough to
seduce an honest girl. Nor did he now possess the skill and the agility
requisite for an escape from prison, or for gymnastic feats upon the
roof-tops. But in spite of his age, he was cleverer than anyone else!
Once back in Venice, he could do anything he pleased. The first step,
the essential step, was to get back. Perhaps it would not be necessary
to kill anyone. There were other kinds of revenge, grimmer, more
devilish, than a commonplace murder. If he were to feign acceptance of
the Council's proposal, it would be the easiest thing in the world to
compass the destruction of those whom he wished to destroy, instead of
bringing about the ruin of those whom the authorities had in mind, and
who were doubtless the finest fellows among all the inhabitants of
Venice! Monstrous! Because they were the enemies of this infamous
government, because they were reputed heretics, were they to languish in
The Leads where he had languished twenty-five years ago, or were they to
perish under the executioner's axe? He detested the government a hundred
times more than they did, and with better reason. He had been a lifelong
heretic; was a heretic to-day, upon sincerer conviction than them all.
What a queer comedy he had been playing of late years--simply from
tedium and disgust. He to believe in God? What sort of a God was it who
was gracious only to the young, and left the old in the lurch? A God
who, when the fanc