Page 92 - All About History - Issue 18-14

Casanova: The Ultimate Playboy

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Are you at a masked ball?
NO

YES

Go to the masked ball Is her husband in the room?
YES
Is she a noblewoman?

NO
NO
YES
Is she a nun? feed her oysters and recite
beautiful poetry

NO YES
arrange to meet later
by her convent

charm her with compliments and
take her somewhere private where
Is she your daughter? you can be alone
YES NO

coincidence stunned him into inaction. “Love is a great poet, its resources are inexhaustible,
Recovering his wits, Casanova engaged the
assistance of a nearby prisoner, sending him the but if the end it has in view is not obtained, it feels
metal spike in a copy of the Bible under a plate
of particularly buttery pasta, designed to distract weary and remains silent’”
the guard. In a daring move the adjacent prisoner,
Father Balbi, managed to make a hole in his ceiling
and another above Casanova’s new cell. Leaving and pretending to be dignitaries that had been fled Venice for Paris, there to continue his itinerant
behind a note – ”I shall not die, but live, and declare locked in overnight after a particularly raucous existence, losing and gaining fortunes, causing
the works of the Lord“ – the two escapees bent function. Casanova could scarcely believe his luck mischief and wooing women.
aside the lead plates on the roof. as the guards dutifully allowed the pair to stroll to He would return to the Italian city again in
Realising that the drop to Venice’s famous freedom through the front gate. later life and, although he lived out his final
Grand Canal was too great, the duo managed to Making good their escape on a gondola, the two days in Bohemia – now the Czech Republic – the
break a window into another room, descending navigated Venice’s canals and left the city – the waterways, palaces, masked balls and gondolas of
eight metres (25 feet) with the help of a knotted only two to ever escape the doge’s palace. Casanova Venice are to this day inseparable from the legend
bedsheet. Resting until morning, the pair made would later describe his prison break as a miracle. of Giacomo Girolamo Casanova: history’s most
their way through the palace, brazening it out Realising he had to leave his home city, Casanova famous lover in the city of love.

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