The Secrets of Casanova by Greg Michaels Page B

.”
    “Your friend from Venice? Ahh.” Scarcely turning in Jacques’ direction, Grimani nodded.
    Jacques held his tongue, hoping to see what gesture of war or peace the man might make.
    After introductory formalities were completed, Jacques could no longer resist. “It’s well we meet, Cavaliere. I knew you by reputation when I was younger and yet able to reside in our homeland.” Jacques heard Dominique’s sudden inhalation.
    Cavaliere Grimani opened his arms wide and laughed. “Is that a refined way of saying that I’m older than you?” He crooked one arm back toward his barrel chest and, with a tap of his finger, summoned his maître d’hôtel to his side. “Send Signor Casanova’s valet to the kitchen to have some food. And please show Madame from this gloomy library to our ballroom. Signor Casanova and I shall join her there momentarily.”
    Cavaliere Grimani once again bowed to Dominique, who, with a baffled expression, was immediately escorted from the room.
    Jacques’ hackles were up. He threw a quick glance at the departing Petrine.
    “Now that we are alone, Signor Casanova, will you join me?” Cavaliere Grimani extended a snuffbox of light-colored tortoiseshell encrusted in gold. Jacques grudgingly accepted, inhaled the tobacco through his nose, and handed back the box.
    “Fine Spaniol, is it not?”
    Jacques nodded. As he did so, Grimani, swift as a snake, slapped him hard across the face.
    Jacques seized his stinging cheek, then reached for his dagger.
    Grimani, already two steps away, faced Jacques. “Drawing that poniard would be an egregious error,” he hissed in a withering tone. “Do not presume to enter my home and insult me. Insolence.” He clapped his hands together as if he were quashing a fly. The man paced angrily and continued his vociferous cry. “You deserve exile from Venice. You earned imprisonment.”
    “I did nothing to—“
    “In some circles you are a champion—for your escape—and because of this momentary notoriety, the government shies away from jailing you. But in better circles, people ask the cause for your imprisonment. Always they reach the correct conclusion: you’re an affliction who should be gotten rid of.”
    Even as he snugged his dagger back into its sheath, Jacques felt the harried rush to redraw his steel. “It’s only for Dominique that I restrain myself,” he barked.
    Cavaliere Grimani spread his legs wide and smoothed the peruke on his head. “I know of your career as adventurer, as some call it. Vanity, boy. You possess only, as the French say, nostalgie de la boue . ‘Homesickness for the gutter.’ Your notion is to spit constantly on the world, then expect the world to reward you. As a renegade from the Venetian Republic, you have been a personal embarrassment to me for years. If Venice cannot presently sit atop the world order as it has for past centuries, it’s because of presumptuous vulgarians such as you.”
    Jacques checked his fury. “I’ll quit this house—and neither you nor Voltaire will ever possess my manuscript.”
    “Do as you please. But from the inquiries I’ve made, you are one short step away from debtors’ prison. Your abysmal behaviors poise you for death.”
    “So you have tentacles everywhere.”
    Grimani ignored the affront while marching back and forth. “What did you expect from this little plan of Dominique’s? Ho! Signor Casanova, the worm, now has the opportunity to become a butterfly! He’s been given the main chance to consort with French society as he did some years ago. To be able to visit the consequential salons again where one hears the real news that allows clever speculation on the market, or induces one to take the correct step at the opportune moment. Signor Casanova has need of fresh opportunity. A fresh victim. To latch like a parasite upon some great personage. To suck them dry. As you do to that fool, Fragonard.”
    Jacques’ face burned hot. “Fragonard? How—?”
    “Tentacles