The Leads of Venice

The Furnace of the Council of Ten

Beneath the timber garrets of that sumptuous rose-marble palace where the Serenissima parades her splendour lies a realm of shadows whose name is uttered only in hushed whispers: the Leads—I Piombi. There, immediately beneath the colossal sheets of metal that crown the roofs of the Doge, the State Inquisition caused cages of oak to be constructed, sheathed in heavy ironwork. In this summer of 1755, the Italian sun converts each cell into an incandescent oven wherein air is wanting, where fleas swarm by the myriad, and where condemnations fall without trial, without term, and without appeal.

Giacomo Casanova, seized at the break of dawn by the dreaded Messer Grande on charges of possessing cabalistic manuscripts and brazen libertinism, has been suffocating there for fourteen months. His universe is reduced to a foul pallet, an iron bowl, and the surly figure of the turnkey Lorenzo, who makes the rounds of the trapdoors to the heavy clanking of a bunch of secular keys. Anywhere else, a man would resign himself to stupor or madness. But Casanova, his intellect honed to a razor’s edge by the injustice of the merchant Republic, lies in wait for the slightest flaw in the beams and hinges.

« Whosoever has beheld the Leads knows that none leaves them alive, unless the clemency of three masked judges draws back the bolts. Neither force nor artifice can avail. » — Auguste Maquet, The Prisons of Europe.

The Iron Spontoon and the Apostate Monk

The instrument of deliverance presented itself in the most unexpected guise during a rare stroll through the narrow gallery: a heavy iron bolt half an inch thick, abandoned amid ancient rubbish. With the patience of a galley slave and a piece of black marble concealed in his pocket, Giacomo spent whole nights rubbing the metal, wearing his palms to the quick, until he had ground that crude bar into a sharpened espontoon—a formidable dagger capable of biting into stone and solid oak.

Yet the jailer suddenly altered his cell assignment. Digging beneath his own feet was now out of the question without courting instant discovery. Casanova thereupon turned his genius toward his fellow in misfortune: Father Marino Balbi, a licentious and unruly monk confined in the contiguous garret. Through the agency of Lorenzo, whom the prisoner hoodwinked by feigning an exchange of pious literature, a clandestine correspondence was established. The fatal iron bodkin journeyed from cell to cell, stitched into the binding of an enormous folio Bible, itself concealed beneath a steaming platter of macaroni swimming in butter to deter the turnkey’s inquisitive fingers.

The Breach Beneath an All Saints’ Eve Sky

On the night of October 31, 1756, while Venice prepared to celebrate All Saints’ Day and the sbirri caroused in the guardhouses along the canal, the assault commenced. Perched on makeshift stools, Father Balbi attacked the ceiling of his cell with the spike, carving a passage into the common loft before piercing the floorboards directly above Casanova’s chamber. At midnight, the timbers yielded with a hellish groan; the monk dropped down into the arms of the master of escapes.

Casanova leaped into the breach in his turn, the iron spontoon thrust into his belt and a cord plaited from shredded bedsheets slung over his shoulder. Under the vast, deserted rafters, the two men sawed through the laths, forced the iron crampons, and wrenched free a massive sheet of roofing lead. The crisp air of the lagoon struck their faces with the sudden violence of a resurrection. Outside, the moon illuminated the dizzying crest of the palace. Casanova crawled out first upon the sharp ridge of the roof, sliding over the dew-slicked metal above a pitch-black precipice of sixty feet, beneath which rumbled the unseen waters of the Rio di Palazzo.

The Leap into the Unknown and the Giants’ Staircase

Suspended between heaven and the abyss, the fugitives descried a dormer window opening onto the lower galleries of the ducal chancery. By means of their cord secured to the roof-timbers, Casanova lowered himself, suffering a brutal drop that bruised his loins and tore away his fingernails. Balbi joined him, trembling with terror. Here they were, enclosed anew within the secret chambers of the Signoria, amid the dusty registers of the Inquisition, with the inner doors of massive oak inexorably locked from without.

Then it was that sheer audacity took the place of force. At dawn, Casanova stripped off his tattered rags and donned a magnificent suit of taffeta fashioned in the latest Parisian mode, his gold-laced hat set upon his head. Pressing his face against the barred wicket looking out onto the noble staircase, he pounded repeatedly, shouting at the top of his voice. The porter on duty, believing it to be some impatient senator who had inadvertently spent the night following an extended assembly, came running and turned the key without the slightest suspicion.

With a haughty countenance and a measured stride, concealing his bloodied, lacerated hands, Casanova strode through the doorway, followed by the pitiable monk. They descended at a run the monumental Scala dei Giganti, crossed Saint Mark’s Square where the morning mist was only beginning to part, and vaulted into the first gondola moored to the molo. “To Mestre!” Casanova cried, flinging a handful of gold at the boatman, “and row as though the devil himself were at your heels!” Behind them, the winged lion of Venice kept vigil still over its dungeons, but for the first time in its history, the empire of the Leads had yielded up its prey.