The fort, which usually held a garrison of a hundred half-pay Sclavonians, happened to contain at that time two thousand Albanians. They were called the Cimariotes.
The secretary of war -commonly called the sage à l'écriture- had summoned them from the East in view of coming promotions.
He wanted the officers on hand in order to prove their merits before being rewarded.
They came from that strip of Epirus called Albania, belonging to the Venetian Republic, and they had covered themselves with glory in the last war against the Turks.
For me it was a new and curious spectacle.
Some eighteen or twenty officers, all of advanced age yet broad-shouldered and sound, showed us the scars which covered their face and their chest.
The lieutenant-colonel in particular looked as if war had tried to erase him and failed.
Without exaggeration, a quarter of his head was gone: one eye, one ear, and the better part of his jaw. Yet he ate with appetite, spoke distinctly, and laughed easily.
He had with him all his family, composed of two pretty daughters, who looked all the prettier in their national costume, and of seven sons, every one of them a soldier.
He stood six feet tall, with a splendid figure, and a face so ruined that it was almost terrifying.
I took a liking to him at once and would have gladly spent hours in his company if his breath had not been pure garlic.
All the Albanians lived on it.
Their pockets were full of cloves; they chewed it with the same pleasure we give to a sugar-plum.
After that, it is hard to maintain that garlic is a poison but its only medicinal virtue is to rouse the appetite, acting as a tonic on weak stomachs.
The lieutenant-colonel could not read, but his ignorance did not trouble him.
Among his officers and men only the priest and the surgeon could boast greater learning. But what they lacked in education they carried in gold.
Every man, officer or private, had his purse heavy with sequins; at least half were married, and the fortress contained a colony of five or six hundred women, plus as many children as God chose to scatter.
I felt greatly interested in them all.
Happy idleness! I often regret you.
You brought me nothing but new sights, while I hate old age which never offers but what I know already, unless I open a gazette, and in my youth I cared nothing for them.
Alone in my room, I took inventory of my trunk. Anything of an ecclesiastical character I set aside.
Then I sent for a Jew and sold the lot without mercy.
Next, I wrote to M. Rosa, enclosed all the tickets for the things I had pawned, and asked him to sell everything, without exception, and forward me whatever remained.
Thanks to these two operations, I could pay my Sclavonian servant the full ten sous of my daily allowance.
Another soldier, once a hairdresser, took charge of my hair, which I had been forced to neglect in the seminary.
My days passed in walking the ramparts and wandering through the barracks; my evenings divided themselves between the major's apartment for some intellectual enjoyment, and the rooms of the Albanian lieutenant-colonel for a sprinkling of love.
The Albanian lieutenant-colonel, convinced his colonel would soon be made brigadier, put in for the vacant regiment, but he had a rival and he feared his success.
I wrote him a petition, short, but so well composed that the secretary of war, having enquired the name of the author, gave the Albanian his colonelcy.
The Albanian came back to the fort transported with joy.
He seized me in his arms, swore he owed everything to my pen, and invited me to a family dinner where his gratitude nearly suffocated me under waves of garlic.
In payment he pressed on me twelve bottargos and two pounds of excellent Turkish tobacco.
Word of my success spread quickly. Every officer decided that no promotion could be obtained without my help.
I lent my pen to all parties, which naturally entailed many quarrels upon me.
But, finding myself the lucky possessor of some forty sequins, I had ceased to fear poverty and could afford to laugh at everything.
Fortune, however, has a way of cutting short such laughter.
I met with an accident which made me pass six weeks in a very unpleasant condition.
On the 2nd of April -the fatal anniversary of my birth- a very handsome Greek woman came to my room as I was getting up.
Her husband, she said, was an ensign entitled by service and conduct to the rank of lieutenant.
He would have obtained it long ago, but his captain opposed him out of spite because she had refused him certain favours reserved, in her opinion, for a husband.
She showed me certificates supporting her claim and begged me to write a petition she meant to present in person to the secretary of war.
For reward she could, she said, offer me only her heart.
"Your heart ought not to go alone," I replied.
I acted as I spoke, and met no other resistance than the objection which a pretty woman is always sure to feign for the sake of appearance.
When our treaty was concluded, I told her to return at noon for the finished petition.
She was punctual, and her gratitude proved as warm the second time as the first.
In the evening, alleging some corrections to be made in the document, she supplied an excellent pretext for a third expression of thanks.
But, alas! the path of pleasure is not strewn only with roses!
On the third day, I found out, much to my dismay, that a serpent had been coiled among the flowers.
Six weeks of care and strict regimen restored me to health.
When I saw the beautiful Greek again, I was foolish enough to reproach her for her gift.
She disarmed me with a laugh.
"I gave you only what I possessed," she said. "It was for you to be prudent."
The reader cannot imagine how much this first misfortune grieved me, and what deep shame I felt.
And since I am on the subject of my follies, I may as well relate an incident, which will give some idea of my thoughtlessness.
One morning Madame Vida, the major's sister-in-law, found herself alone with me. She chose that moment to confide in me her sorrows.
She began to speak bitterly of her husband.
His jealousy had brought her to the fort; his jealousy, too, had condemned her to a separate bed.
For four years, she said, he had left her to sleep alone when she was in the very flower of her age.
"I trust to God," she added, "that my husband does not learn you have spent an hour alone with me. I should never hear the end of it."
Feeling deeply for her grief, and because confidence begets confidence.
I was stupid enough to tell her the sad state to which I had been reduced by the cruel Greek woman.
I added, with the thoughtless air of honesty, that my misery was the more cruel because I would have been delighted to console her and to give her the opportunity of a revenge for her jealous husband's coldness.
The effect was instantaneous.
She sprang from her chair. Her face changed; her voice rose.
She poured on me every name a wounded "honest woman" keeps in reserve for the libertine who presumes too far.
I did not protest; I understood my offence.
I bowed and moved toward the door.
"Your visits will not be welcome again," she called after me. "You are a conceited puppy, unworthy of the society of good and respectable women."
That stung me into a reply.
I told her that a respectable woman would have been more cautious with her confidences than she had been with me.
I left her room with the sour certainty that, had I been in full health -or had I kept my mishap to myself- she would have been but too happy to receive my consolations.
A few days later I had better reason to curse my acquaintance with the Greek woman.
Ascension Day came. The Bucentaur ceremony was celebrated near the fort, and M. Rosa brought Madame Orio and her two nieces to witness it.
I had the pleasure of treating them to a good dinner in my room.
During the day I found myself alone with the two sisters at a casement overlooking the festivities.
Their arms wound around my neck; their kisses came fast, warm, and insistent. They expected more than kisses; they made no secret of it.
To conceal the real state of things, I affected a sudden prudence. I kept glancing toward the door, whispering about the danger of being surprised.
They believed my alarm—at least they pretended to—and had to content themselves with my thin excuse.
I had written to my mother describing Grimani's treatment.
She replied that she had written to him in turn; she was confident he would soon set me free.
She added that an arrangement had been made: the money Razetta had raised from the sale of the furniture would be used to secure a small patrimony for my youngest brother.
But in this matter Grimani did not act honestly. The patrimony was not settled until thirteen years later, and even then only in name.
I shall speak of that unfortunate brother again; he died poor in Rome twenty years ago.
Toward mid-June the Cimariotes were sent back to the East. The fort shrank to its usual garrison.
The sudden emptiness sickened me.
Without the noise, the faces, the constant movement, my thoughts began to echo.
I grew restless, then irritable, then violent in temper, and I gave way to terrible fits of passion.
The heat became intense. I bore it badly.
At last I wrote to M. Grimani, asking him to send me two summer suits I had left in Venice, and telling him where they might be found—if Razetta had not already sold them.
A week later I was in the major's apartment when my evil star walked in.
Razetta appeared, followed by a man he introduced as Petrillo, "the celebrated favourite of the Empress of Russia, just arrived from St. Petersburg."
He should have said infamous instead of celebrated, and buffoon instead of favourite.
The major invited them to sit.
Grimani's gondolier handed Razetta a parcel; he tossed it to me with a sneer.
"I've brought you your rags," he said. "Take them."
"Some day," I answered, "I'll bring you a rigano." (rigano means thrashing)
At that, he lifted his cane as if to strike me.
The major's face hardened.
"Do you wish to pass the night in the guard-house?" he asked.
Razetta let the cane drop.
Petrillo, who had so far held his tongue, decided it was time to show his wit.
"I'm sorry I didn't find you in Venice," he told me. "You might have shown me certain places you must know very well."
"Very likely we would have met your wife in those places," I said.
He looked me over slowly.
"I am a good judge of faces," he replied, "and I can see that you are a true gallows-bird."
Rage shook me so hard I could barely keep my hands still.
The major, who shared my disgust, cut the scene short.
"I have business to attend to," he said coolly. "Gentlemen, you will excuse me."
They took the hint and left.
As soon as the door closed, the major promised that he would go to the war office next day and lodge a formal complaint against Razetta for his insolence.
I remained alone, a prey to feelings of the deepest indignation, and to a most ardent thirst for revenge.