On the 29th November, Casanova wrote from Frankfort that a drunken
postilion had upset him and in the fall he had dislocated his left
shoulder, but that a good bone-setter had restored it to place. On the
1st December he wrote that he was healed, having taken medicine and
having been blooded. He promised to send Francesca eight sequins to pay
her rent. He reached Vienna about the 7th of December and on the 15th
sent Francesco a bill of exchange for eight sequins and two lires.
On the last day of 1783, Francesca wrote to him at Vienna:
"I see by your good letter that you will go to Dresden and then to Berlin
and that you will return to Vienna the 10th January . . . . I am
astonished, my dear friend, at the great journeys you make in this cold
weather, but, still, you are a great man, big-hearted, full of spirit and
courage; you travel in this terrible cold as though it were
nothing . . . . "
On the 9th January, Casanova wrote from Dessau to his brother Giovanni,
proposing to make peace with him, but without results. On the 27th, he
was at Prague. By the 16th February, he was again in Vienna, after a trip
lasting sixty-two days. His health was perfect, and he had gained flesh
due, as he wrote Francesca, to his contented mind which was no longer
tormented.
In February, he entered the service of M. Foscarini, Venetian Ambassador,
"to write dispatches."
On the 10th March, Francesca wrote:
"Dearest of Friends, I reply at once to your good letter of the 28th
February which I received Sunday . . . . I thank you for your kindness
which makes you say that you love me and that when you have money you
will send me some . . . but that at the moment you are dry as a
salamander. I do not know what sort of animal that is. But as for me I am
certainly dry of money and I am consumed with the hope of having some
. . . . I see that you were amused at the Carnival and that you were four
times at the masked ball, where there were two hundred women, and that
you danced minuets and quadrilles to the great astonishment of the
ambassador Foscarini who told everyone that you were sixty years old,
although in reality you have not yet reached your sixtieth year. You
might well laugh at that and say that he must be blind to have such an
idea.
"I see that you assisted, with your brother, at a grand dinner at the
Ambassador's . . . .
"You say that you have read my letters to your brother and that he
salutes me. Make him my best compliments and thank him. You ask me to
advise you whether, if he should happen to return to Venice with you, he
could lodge with you in your house. Tell him yes, because the chickens
are always in the loft and make no dirt; and, as for the dogs, one
watches to see that they do not make dirt. The furniture of the apartment
is already in place; it lacks only a wardrobe and the little bed which
you bought for your nephew and the mirror; as for the rest, everything is
as you left it. . . ."
It is possible that, at the "grand dinner," Casanova was presented to
Count Waldstein, without whose kindness to Casanova the Memoirs probably
would never have been written. The Lord of Dux, Joseph Charles Emmanuel
Waldstein-Wartenberg, Chamberlain to Her Imperial Majesty, descendant of
the great Wallenstein, was the elder of the eleven children of Emmanuel
Philibert, Count Waldstein, and Maria Theresa, Princess Liechtenstein.
Very egotistic and willful in his youth, careless of his affairs, and an
imprudent gambler, at thirty years of age he had not yet settled down.
His mother was disconsolated that her son could not separate himself from
occupations "so little suited to his spirit and his birth:"
On the 13th March 1784, Count Lamberg wrote Casanova: "I know M. le C. de
Waldstein through having heard him praised by judges worthy of
appreciating the transcendent qualities of more than one kind peculiar to
the Count. I congratulate you on having such a Maecenas, and I
congratulate him in his turn on having chosen such a man as yourself."
Which last remark certainly foreshadows the library at Dux.
Later, on the lath March, 1785, Zaguri wrote: "In two months at the
latest, all will be settled. I am very happy." Referring further, it is
conjectured, to Casanova's hopes of placing himself with the Count.