THE   FORERUNNERS I ARA PACIS DE profundis clamans, out of the abyss of all the hates,To thee, Divine Peace, will I lift up my song.The din of the armies shall not drown it.Imperturbable, I behold the rising flood incarnadine,Which bears the beauteous body of mutilated Europe,And I hear the raging wind which stirs the souls of men.Though I stand alone, I shall be faithful to thee.I shall not take my place at the sacrilegious communion of... more...

CHAPTER ONE. Casanova was in his fifty-third year. Though no longer driven by the lust of adventure that had spurred him in his youth, he was still hunted athwart the world, hunted now by a restlessness due to the approach of old age. His yearning for Venice, the city of his birth, grew so intense that, like a wounded bird slowly circling downwards in its death flight, he began to move in ever-narrowing circles. Again and again, during the last... more...