CHAPTER I

THE COMPLETE MEMOIRS OF JACQUES CASANOVA de SEINGALT 1725-1798

THE RARE UNABRIDGED LONDON EDITION OF 1894 TRANSLATED BY ARTHUR MACHEN TO

WHICH HAS BEEN ADDED THE CHAPTERS DISCOVERED BY ARTHUR SYMONS.

[Etext Editors Note: These memoires were not written for children

and may outrage readers offended by Chaucer, La Fontaine, Rabelais

and The Old Testament. D.W.]

MEMOIRS OF JACQUES CASANOVA de SEINGALT 1725-1798

VENETIAN YEARS, Volume 1a--CHILDHOOD

CONTENTS:

CASANOVA AT DUX

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE

AUTHOR'S PREFACE

CHILDHOOD AND ADOLESCENCE

CASANOVA AT DUX

An Unpublished Chapter of History, By Arthur Symons

I

The Memoirs of Casanova, though they have enjoyed the popularity of a bad

reputation, have never had justice done to them by serious students of

literature, of life, and of history. One English writer, indeed, Mr.

Havelock Ellis, has realised that 'there are few more delightful books in

the world,' and he has analysed them in an essay on Casanova, published

in Affirmations, with extreme care and remarkable subtlety. But this

essay stands alone, at all events in English, as an attempt to take

Casanova seriously, to show him in his relation to his time, and in his

relation to human problems. And yet these Memoirs are perhaps the most

valuable document which we possess on the society of the eighteenth

century; they are the history of a unique life, a unique personality, one

of the greatest of autobiographies; as a record of adventures, they are

more entertaining than Gil Blas, or Monte Cristo, or any of the imaginary

travels, and escapes, and masquerades in life, which have been written in

imitation of them. They tell the story of a man who loved life

passionately for its own sake: one to whom woman was, indeed, the most

important thing in the world, but to whom nothing in the world was

indifferent. The bust which gives us the most lively notion of him shows

us a great, vivid, intellectual face, full of fiery energy and calm

resource, the face of a thinker and a fighter in one. A scholar, an

adventurer, perhaps a Cabalist, a busy stirrer in politics, a gamester,

one 'born for the fairer sex,' as he tells us, and born also to be a

vagabond; this man, who is remembered now for his written account of his

own life, was that rarest kind of autobiographer, one who did not live to

write, but wrote because he had lived, and when he could live no longer.

And his Memoirs take one all over Europe, giving sidelights, all the more

valuable in being almost accidental, upon many of the affairs and people

most interesting to us during two-thirds of the eighteenth century.

Giacomo Casanova was born in Venice, of Spanish and Italian parentage, on

April 2, 1725; he died at the Chateau of Dux, in Bohemia, on June 4,

1798. In that lifetime of seventy-three years he travelled, as his

Memoirs show us, in Italy, France, Germany, Austria, England,

Switzerland, Belgium, Russia, Poland, Spain, Holland, Turkey; he met

Voltaire at Ferney, Rousseau at Montmorency, Fontenelle, d'Alembert and

Crebillon at Paris, George III. in London, Louis XV. at Fontainebleau,

Catherine the Great at St. Petersburg, Benedict XII. at Rome, Joseph II.

at Vienna, Frederick the Great at Sans-Souci. Imprisoned by the

Inquisitors of State in the Piombi at Venice, he made, in 1755, the most

famous escape in history. His Memoirs, as we have them, break off

abruptly at the moment when he is expecting a safe conduct, and the

permission to return to Venice after twenty years' wanderings. He did

return, as we know from documents in the Venetian archives; he returned

as secret agent of the Inquisitors, and remained in their service from

1774 until 1782. At the end of 1782 he left Venice; and next year we find

him in Paris, where, in 1784, he met Count Waldstein at the Venetian

Ambassador's, and was invited by him to become his librarian at Dux. He

accepted, and for the fourteen remaining years of his life lived at Dux,

where he wrote his Memoirs.

Casanova died in 1798, but nothing was heard of the Memoirs (which the

Prince de Ligne, in his own Memoirs, tells us that Casanova had read to

him, and in which he found 'du dyamatique, de la rapidite, du comique, de

la philosophie, des choses neuves, sublimes, inimitables meme') until the

year 1820, when a certain Carlo Angiolini brought to the publishing house

of Brockhaus, in Leipzig, a manuscript entitled Histoire de ma vie jusqu

a l'an 1797, in the handwriting of Casanova. This manuscript, which I

have examined at Leipzig, is written on foolscap paper, rather rough and

yellow; it is written on both sides of the page, and in sheets or quires;

here and there the paging shows that some pages have been omitted, and in

their place are smaller sheets of thinner and whiter paper, all in

Casanova's handsome, unmistakable handwriting. The manuscript is done up

in twelve bundles, corresponding with the twelve volumes of the original

edition; and only in one place is there a gap. The fourth and fifth

chapters of the twelfth volume are missing, as the editor of the original

edition points out, adding: 'It is not probable that these two chapters

have been withdrawn from the manuscript of Casanova by a strange hand;

everything leads us to believe that the author himself suppressed them,

in the intention, no doubt, of re-writing them, but without having found

time to do so.' The manuscript ends abruptly with the year 1774, and not

with the year 1797, as the title would lead us to suppose.

This manuscript, in its original state, has never been printed. Herr

Brockhaus, on obtaining possession of the manuscript, had it translated

into German by Wilhelm Schutz, but with many omissions and alterations,

and published this translation, volume by volume, from 1822 to 1828,

under the title, 'Aus den Memoiren des Venetianers Jacob Casanova de

Seingalt.' While the German edition was in course of publication, Herr

Brockhaus employed a certain Jean Laforgue, a professor of the French

language at Dresden, to revise the original manuscript, correcting

Casanova's vigorous, but at times incorrect, and often somewhat Italian,

French according to his own notions of elegant writing, suppressing

passages which seemed too free-spoken from the point of view of morals

and of politics, and altering the names of some of the persons referred

to, or replacing those names by initials. This revised text was published

in twelve volumes, the first two in 1826, the third and fourth in 1828,

the fifth to the eighth in 1832, and the ninth to the twelfth in 1837;

the first four bearing the imprint of Brockhaus at Leipzig and Ponthieu

et Cie at Paris; the next four the imprint of Heideloff et Campe at

Paris; and the last four nothing but 'A Bruxelles.' The volumes are all

uniform, and were all really printed for the firm of Brockhaus. This,

however far from representing the real text, is the only authoritative

edition, and my references throughout this article will always be to this

edition.

In turning over the manuscript at Leipzig, I read some of the suppressed

passages, and regretted their suppression; but Herr Brockhaus, the

present head of the firm, assured me that they are not really very

considerable in number. The damage, however, to the vivacity of the whole

narrative, by the persistent alterations of M. Laforgue, is incalculable.

I compared many passages, and found scarcely three consecutive sentences

untouched. Herr Brockhaus (whose courtesy I cannot sufficiently

acknowledge) was kind enough to have a passage copied out for me, which I

afterwards read over, and checked word by word. In this passage Casanova

says, for instance: 'Elle venoit presque tous les jours lui faire une

belle visite.' This is altered into: 'Cependant chaque jour Therese

venait lui faire une visite.' Casanova says that some one 'avoit, comme

de raison, forme le projet d'allier Dieu avec le diable.' This is made to

read: 'Qui, comme de raison, avait saintement forme le projet d'allier

les interets du ciel aux oeuvres de ce monde.' Casanova tells us that

Therese would not commit a mortal sin 'pour devenir reine du monde;' pour

une couronne,' corrects the indefatigable Laforgue. 'Il ne savoit que lui

dire' becomes 'Dans cet etat de perplexite;' and so forth. It must,

therefore, be realized that the Memoirs, as we have them, are only a kind

of pale tracing of the vivid colours of the original.

When Casanova's Memoirs were first published, doubts were expressed as to

their authenticity, first by Ugo Foscolo (in the Westminster Review,

1827), then by Querard, supposed to be an authority in regard to

anonymous and pseudonymous writings, finally by Paul Lacroix, 'le

bibliophile Jacob', who suggested, or rather expressed his 'certainty,'

that the real author of the Memoirs was Stendhal, whose 'mind, character,

ideas and style' he seemed to recognise on every page. This theory, as

foolish and as unsupported as the Baconian theory of Shakespeare, has

been carelessly accepted, or at all events accepted as possible, by many

good scholars who have never taken the trouble to look into the matter

for themselves. It was finally disproved by a series of articles of

Armand Baschet, entitled 'Preuves curieuses de l'authenticite des

Memoires de Jacques Casanova de Seingalt,' in 'Le Livre,' January,

February, April and May, 1881; and these proofs were further corroborated

by two articles of Alessandro d'Ancona, entitled 'Un Avventuriere del

Secolo XVIII., in the 'Nuovo Antologia,' February 1 and August 1, 1882.

Baschet had never himself seen the manuscript of the Memoirs, but he had

learnt all the facts about it from Messrs. Brockhaus, and he had himself

examined the numerous papers relating to Casanova in the Venetian

archives. A similar examination was made at the Frari at about the same

time by the Abbe Fulin; and I myself, in 1894, not knowing at the time

that the discovery had been already made, made it over again for myself.

There the arrest of Casanova, his imprisonment in the Piombi, the exact

date of his escape, the name of the monk who accompanied him, are all

authenticated by documents contained in the 'riferte' of the Inquisition

of State; there are the bills for the repairs of the roof and walls of

the cell from which he escaped; there are the reports of the spies on

whose information he was arrested, for his too dangerous free-spokenness

in matters of religion and morality. The same archives contain

forty-eight letters of Casanova to the Inquisitors of State, dating from

1763 to 1782, among the Riferte dei Confidenti, or reports of secret

agents; the earliest asking permission to return to Venice, the rest

giving information in regard to the immoralities of the city, after his

return there; all in the same handwriting as the Memoirs. Further proof

could scarcely be needed, but Baschet has done more than prove the

authenticity, he has proved the extraordinary veracity, of the Memoirs.

F. W. Barthold, in 'Die Geschichtlichen Personlichkeiten in J. Casanova's

Memoiren,' 2 vols., 1846, had already examined about a hundred of

Casanova's allusions to well known people, showing the perfect exactitude

of all but six or seven, and out of these six or seven inexactitudes

ascribing only a single one to the author's intention. Baschet and

d'Ancona both carry on what Barthold had begun; other investigators, in

France, Italy and Germany, have followed them; and two things are now

certain, first, that Casanova himself wrote the Memoirs published under

his name, though not textually in the precise form in which we have them;

and, second, that as their veracity becomes more and more evident as they

are confronted with more and more independent witnesses, it is only fair

to suppose that they are equally truthful where the facts are such as

could only have been known to Casanova himself.

II

For more than two-thirds of a century it has been known that Casanova

spent the last fourteen years of his life at Dux, that he wrote his

Memoirs there, and that he died there. During all this time people have

been discussing the authenticity and the truthfulness of the Memoirs,

they have been searching for information about Casanova in various

directions, and yet hardly any one has ever taken the trouble, or

obtained the permission, to make a careful examination in precisely the

one place where information was most likely to be found. The very

existence of the manuscripts at Dux was known only to a few, and to most

of these only on hearsay; and thus the singular good fortune was reserved

for me, on my visit to Count Waldstein in September 1899, to be the first

to discover the most interesting things contained in these manuscripts.

M. Octave Uzanne, though he had not himself visited Dux, had indeed

procured copies of some of the manuscripts, a few of which were published

by him in Le Livre, in 1887 and 1889. But with the death of Le Livre in

1889 the 'Casanova inedit' came to an end, and has never, so far as I

know, been continued elsewhere. Beyond the publication of these

fragments, nothing has been done with the manuscripts at Dux, nor has an

account of them ever been given by any one who has been allowed to

examine them.

For five years, ever since I had discovered the documents in the Venetian

archives, I had wanted to go to Dux; and in 1899, when I was staying with

Count Lutzow at Zampach, in Bohemia, I found the way kindly opened for

me. Count Waldstein, the present head of the family, with extreme

courtesy, put all his manuscripts at my disposal, and invited me to stay

with him. Unluckily, he was called away on the morning of the day that I

reached Dux. He had left everything ready for me, and I was shown over

the castle by a friend of his, Dr. Kittel, whose courtesy I should like

also to acknowledge. After a hurried visit to the castle we started on

the long drive to Oberleutensdorf, a smaller Schloss near Komotau, where

the Waldstein family was then staying. The air was sharp and bracing; the

two Russian horses flew like the wind; I was whirled along in an

unfamiliar darkness, through a strange country, black with coal mines,

through dark pine woods, where a wild peasantry dwelt in little mining

towns. Here and there, a few men and women passed us on the road, in

their Sunday finery; then a long space of silence, and we were in the

open country, galloping between broad fields; and always in a haze of

lovely hills, which I saw more distinctly as we drove back next morning.

The return to Dux was like a triumphal entry, as we dashed through the

market-place filled with people come for the Monday market, pots and pans

and vegetables strewn in heaps all over the ground, on the rough paving

stones, up to the great gateway of the castle, leaving but just room for

us to drive through their midst. I had the sensation of an enormous

building: all Bohemian castles are big, but this one was like a royal

palace. Set there in the midst of the town, after the Bohemian fashion,

it opens at the back upon great gardens, as if it were in the midst of

the country. I walked through room after room, along corridor after

corridor; everywhere there were pictures, everywhere portraits of

Wallenstein, and battle-scenes in which he led on his troops. The

library, which was formed, or at least arranged, by Casanova, and which

remains as he left it, contains some 25,000 volumes, some of them of

considerable value; one of the most famous books in Bohemian literature,

Skala's History of the Church, exists in manuscript at Dux, and it is

from this manuscript that the two published volumes of it were printed.

The library forms part of the Museum, which occupies a ground-floor wing

of the castle. The first room is an armoury, in which all kinds of arms

are arranged, in a decorative way, covering the ceiling and the walls

with strange patterns. The second room contains pottery, collected by

Casanova's Waldstein on his Eastern travels. The third room is full of

curious mechanical toys, and cabinets, and carvings in ivory. Finally, we

come to the library, contained in the two innermost rooms. The

book-shelves are painted white, and reach to the low-vaulted ceilings,

which are whitewashed. At the end of a bookcase, in the corner of one of

the windows, hangs a fine engraved portrait of Casanova.

After I had been all over the castle, so long Casanova's home, I was

taken to Count Waldstein's study, and left there with the manuscripts. I

found six huge cardboard cases, large enough to contain foolscap paper,

lettered on the back: 'Grafl. Waldstein-Wartenberg'sches Real

Fideicommiss. Dux-Oberleutensdorf: Handschriftlicher Nachlass Casanova.'

The cases were arranged so as to stand like books; they opened at the

side; and on opening them, one after another, I found series after series

of manuscripts roughly thrown together, after some pretence at

arrangement, and lettered with a very generalised description of

contents. The greater part of the manuscripts were in Casanova's

handwriting, which I could see gradually beginning to get shaky with

years. Most were written in French, a certain number in Italian. The

beginning of a catalogue in the library, though said to be by him, was

not in his handwriting. Perhaps it was taken down at his dictation. There

were also some copies of Italian and Latin poems not written by him. Then

there were many big bundles of letters addressed to him, dating over more

than thirty years. Almost all the rest was in his own handwriting.

I came first upon the smaller manuscripts, among which I, found, jumbled

together on the same and on separate scraps of paper, washing-bills,

accounts, hotel bills, lists of letters written, first drafts of letters

with many erasures, notes on books, theological and mathematical notes,

sums, Latin quotations, French and Italian verses, with variants, a long

list of classical names which have and have not been 'francises,' with

reasons for and against; 'what I must wear at Dresden'; headings without

anything to follow, such as: 'Reflexions on respiration, on the true

cause of youth-the crows'; a new method of winning the lottery at Rome;

recipes, among which is a long printed list of perfumes sold at Spa; a

newspaper cutting, dated Prague, 25th October 1790, on the thirty-seventh

balloon ascent of Blanchard; thanks to some 'noble donor' for the gift of

a dog called 'Finette'; a passport for 'Monsieur de Casanova, Venitien,

allant d'ici en Hollande, October 13, 1758 (Ce Passeport bon pour quinze

jours)', together with an order for post-horses, gratis, from Paris to

Bordeaux and Bayonne.'

Occasionally, one gets a glimpse into his daily life at Dux, as in this

note, scribbled on a fragment of paper (here and always I translate the

French literally): 'I beg you to tell my servant what the biscuits are

that I like to eat; dipped in wine, to fortify my stomach. I believe that

they can all be found at Roman's.' Usually, however, these notes, though

often suggested by something closely personal, branch off into more

general considerations; or else begin with general considerations, and

end with a case in point. Thus, for instance, a fragment of three pages

begins: 'A compliment which is only made to gild the pill is a positive

impertinence, and Monsieur Bailli is nothing but a charlatan; the monarch

ought to have spit in his face, but the monarch trembled with fear.' A

manuscript entitled 'Essai d'Egoisme,' dated, 'Dux, this 27th June,

1769,' contains, in the midst of various reflections, an offer to let his

'appartement' in return for enough money to 'tranquillise for six months

two Jew creditors at Prague.' Another manuscript is headed 'Pride and

Folly,' and begins with a long series of antitheses, such as: 'All fools

are not proud, and all proud men are fools. Many fools are happy, all

proud men are unhappy.' On the same sheet follows this instance or

application:

Whether it is possible to compose a Latin distich of the greatest beauty

without knowing either the Latin language or prosody. We must examine the

possibility and the impossibility, and afterwards see who is the man who

says he is the author of the distich, for there are extraordinary people

in the world. My brother, in short, ought to have composed the distich,

because he says so, and because he confided it to me tete-'a-tete. I had,

it is true, difficulty in believing him; but what is one to do! Either

one must believe, or suppose him capable of telling a lie which could

only be told by a fool; and that is impossible, for all Europe knows that

my brother is not a fool.

Here, as so often in these manuscripts, we seem to see Casanova thinking

on paper. He uses scraps of paper (sometimes the blank page of a letter,

on the other side of which we see the address) as a kind of informal

diary; and it is characteristic of him, of the man of infinitely curious

mind, which this adventurer really was, that there are so few merely

personal notes among these casual jottings. Often, they are purely

abstract; at times, metaphysical 'jeux d'esprit,' like the sheet of

fourteen 'Different Wagers,' which begins:

I wager that it is not true that a man who weighs a hundred pounds will

weigh more if you kill him. I wager that if there is any difference, he

will weigh less. I wager that diamond powder has not sufficient force to

kill a man.

Side by side with these fanciful excursions into science, come more

serious ones, as in the note on Algebra, which traces its progress since

the year 1494, before which 'it had only arrived at the solution of

problems of the second degree, inclusive.' A scrap of paper tells us that

Casanova 'did not like regular towns.' 'I like,' he says, 'Venice, Rome,

Florence, Milan, Constantinople, Genoa.' Then he becomes abstract and

inquisitive again, and writes two pages, full of curious, out-of-the-way

learning, on the name of Paradise:

The name of Paradise is a name in Genesis which indicates a place of

pleasure (lieu voluptueux): this term is Persian. This place of pleasure

was made by God before he had created man.

It may be remembered that Casanova quarrelled with Voltaire, because

Voltaire had told him frankly that his translation of L'Ecossaise was a

bad translation. It is piquant to read another note written in this style

of righteous indignation:

Voltaire, the hardy Voltaire, whose pen is without bit or bridle;

Voltaire, who devoured the Bible, and ridiculed our dogmas, doubts, and

after having made proselytes to impiety, is not ashamed, being reduced to

the extremity of life, to ask for the sacraments, and to cover his body

with more relics than St. Louis had at Amboise.

Here is an argument more in keeping with the tone of the Memoirs:

A girl who is pretty and good, and as virtuous as you please, ought not

to take it ill that a man, carried away by her charms, should set himself

to the task of making their conquest. If this man cannot please her by

any means, even if his passion be criminal, she ought never to take

offence at it, nor treat him unkindly; she ought to be gentle, and pity

him, if she does not love him, and think it enough to keep invincibly

hold upon her own duty.

Occasionally he touches upon aesthetical matters, as in a fragment which

begins with this liberal definition of beauty:

Harmony makes beauty, says M. de S. P. (Bernardin de St. Pierre), but the

definition is too short, if he thinks he has said everything. Here is

mine. Remember that the subject is metaphysical. An object really

beautiful ought to seem beautiful to all whose eyes fall upon it. That is

all; there is nothing more to be said.

At times we have an anecdote and its commentary, perhaps jotted down for

use in that latter part of the Memoirs which was never written, or which

has been lost. Here is a single sheet, dated 'this 2nd September, 1791,'

and headed Souvenir:

The Prince de Rosenberg said to me, as we went down stairs, that Madame

de Rosenberg was dead, and asked me if the Comte de Waldstein had in the

library the illustration of the Villa d'Altichiero, which the Emperor had

asked for in vain at the city library of Prague, and when I answered

'yes,' he gave an equivocal laugh. A moment afterwards, he asked me if he

might tell the Emperor. 'Why not, monseigneur? It is not a secret, 'Is

His Majesty coming to Dux?' 'If he goes to Oberlaitensdorf (sic) he will

go to Dux, too; and he may ask you for it, for there is a monument there

which relates to him when he was Grand Duke.' 'In that case, His Majesty

can also see my critical remarks on the Egyptian prints.'

The Emperor asked me this morning, 6th October, how I employed my time at

Dux, and I told him that I was making an Italian anthology. 'You have all

the Italians, then?' 'All, sire.' See what a lie leads to. If I had not

lied in saying that I was making an anthology, I should not have found

myself obliged to lie again in saying that we have all the Italian poets.

If the Emperor comes to Dux, I shall kill myself.

'They say that this Dux is a delightful spot,' says Casanova in one of

the most personal of his notes, 'and I see that it might be for many; but

not for me, for what delights me in my old age is independent of the

place which I inhabit. When I do not sleep I dream, and when I am tired

of dreaming I blacken paper, then I read, and most often reject all that

my pen has vomited.' Here we see him blackening paper, on every occasion,

and for every purpose. In one bundle I found an unfinished story about

Roland, and some adventure with women in a cave; then a 'Meditation on

arising from sleep, 19th May 1789'; then a 'Short Reflection of a

Philosopher who finds himself thinking of procuring his own death. At

Dux, on getting out of bed on 13th October 1793, day dedicated to St.

Lucy, memorable in my too long life.' A big budget, containing

cryptograms, is headed 'Grammatical Lottery'; and there is the title-page

of a treatise on The Duplication of the Hexahedron, demonstrated

geometrically to all the Universities and all the Academies of Europe.'

[See Charles Henry, Les Connaissances Mathimatiques de Casanova. Rome,

1883.] There are innumerable verses, French and Italian, in all stages,

occasionally attaining the finality of these lines, which appear in half

a dozen tentative forms:

'Sans mystere point de plaisirs,

Sans silence point de mystere.

Charme divin de mes loisirs,

Solitude! que tu mes chere!

Then there are a number of more or less complete manuscripts of some

extent. There is the manuscript of the translation of Homer's 'Iliad, in

ottava rima (published in Venice, 1775-8); of the 'Histoire de Venise,'

of the 'Icosameron,' a curious book published in 1787, purporting to be

'translated from English,' but really an original work of Casanova;

'Philocalies sur les Sottises des Mortels,' a long manuscript never

published; the sketch and beginning of 'Le Pollmarque, ou la Calomnie

demasquee par la presence d'esprit. Tragicomedie en trois actes, composed

a Dux dans le mois de Juin de l'Annee, 1791,' which recurs again under

the form of the 'Polemoscope: La Lorgnette menteuse ou la Calomnie

demasquge,' acted before the Princess de Ligne, at her chateau at

Teplitz, 1791. There is a treatise in Italian, 'Delle Passioni'; there

are long dialogues, such as 'Le Philosophe et le Theologien', and 'Reve':

'Dieu-Moi'; there is the 'Songe d'un Quart d'Heure', divided into

minutes; there is the very lengthy criticism of 'Bernardin de

Saint-Pierre'; there is the 'Confutation d'une Censure indiscrate qu'on

lit dans la Gazette de Iena, 19 Juin 1789'; with another large

manuscript, unfortunately imperfect, first called 'L'Insulte', and then

'Placet au Public', dated 'Dux, this 2nd March, 1790,' referring to the

same criticism on the 'Icosameron' and the 'Fuite des Prisons. L'Histoire

de ma Fuite des Prisons de la Republique de Venise, qu'on appelle les

Plombs', which is the first draft of the most famous part of the Memoirs,

was published at Leipzig in 1788; and, having read it in the Marcian

Library at Venice, I am not surprised to learn from this indignant

document that it was printed 'under the care of a young Swiss, who had

the talent to commit a hundred faults of orthography.'

III.

We come now to the documents directly relating to the Memoirs, and among

these are several attempts at a preface, in which we see the actual

preface coming gradually into form. One is entitled 'Casanova au

Lecteur', another 'Histoire de mon Existence', and a third Preface. There

is also a brief and characteristic 'Precis de ma vie', dated November 17,

1797. Some of these have been printed in Le Livre, 1887. But by far the

most important manuscript that I discovered, one which, apparently, I am

the first to discover, is a manuscript entitled 'Extrait du Chapitre 4 et

5. It is written on paper similar to that on which the Memoirs are

written; the pages are numbered 104-148; and though it is described as

Extrait, it seems to contain, at all events, the greater part of the

missing chapters to which I have already referred, Chapters IV. and V. of

the last volume of the Memoirs. In this manuscript we find Armeline and

Scolastica, whose story is interrupted by the abrupt ending of Chapter

III.; we find Mariuccia of Vol. VII, Chapter IX., who married a

hairdresser; and we find also Jaconine, whom Casanova recognises as his

daughter, 'much prettier than Sophia, the daughter of Therese Pompeati,

whom I had left at London.' It is curious that this very important

manuscript, which supplies the one missing link in the Memoirs, should

never have been discovered by any of the few people who have had the

opportunity of looking over the Dux manuscripts. I am inclined to explain

it by the fact that the case in which I found this manuscript contains

some papers not relating to Casanova. Probably, those who looked into

this case looked no further. I have told Herr Brockhaus of my discovery,

and I hope to see Chapters IV. and V. in their places when the

long-looked-for edition of the complete text is at length given to the

world.

Another manuscript which I found tells with great piquancy the whole

story of the Abbe de Brosses' ointment, the curing of the Princess de

Conti's pimples, and the birth of the Duc de Montpensier, which is told

very briefly, and with much less point, in the Memoirs (vol. iii., p.

327). Readers of the Memoirs will remember the duel at Warsaw with Count

Branicki in 1766 (vol. X., pp. 274-320), an affair which attracted a good

deal of attention at the time, and of which there is an account in a

letter from the Abbe Taruffi to the dramatist, Francesco Albergati, dated

Warsaw, March 19, 1766, quoted in Ernesto Masi's Life of Albergati,

Bologna, 1878. A manuscript at Dux in Casanova's handwriting gives an

account of this duel in the third person; it is entitled, 'Description de

l'affaire arrivee a Varsovie le 5 Mars, 1766'. D'Ancona, in the Nuova

Antologia (vol. lxvii., p. 412), referring to the Abbe Taruffi's account,

mentions what he considers to be a slight discrepancy: that Taruffi

refers to the danseuse, about whom the duel was fought, as La Casacci,

while Casanova refers to her as La Catai. In this manuscript Casanova

always refers to her as La Casacci; La Catai is evidently one of M.

Laforgue's arbitrary alterations of the text.

In turning over another manuscript, I was caught by the name Charpillon,

which every reader of the Memoirs will remember as the name of the harpy

by whom Casanova suffered so much in London, in 1763-4. This manuscript

begins by saying: 'I have been in London for six months and have been to

see them (that is, the mother and daughter) in their own house,' where he

finds nothing but 'swindlers, who cause all who go there to lose their

money in gambling.' This manuscript adds some details to the story told

in the ninth and tenth volumes of the Memoirs, and refers to the meeting

with the Charpillons four and a half years before, described in Volume

V., pages 428-485. It is written in a tone of great indignation.

Elsewhere, I found a letter written by Casanova, but not signed,

referring to an anonymous letter which he had received in reference to

the Charpillons, and ending: 'My handwriting is known.' It was not until

the last that I came upon great bundles of letters addressed to Casanova,

and so carefully preserved that little scraps of paper, on which

postscripts are written, are still in their places. One still sees the

seals on the backs of many of the letters, on paper which has slightly

yellowed with age, leaving the ink, however, almost always fresh. They

come from Venice, Paris, Rome, Prague, Bayreuth, The Hague, Genoa, Fiume,

Trieste, etc., and are addressed to as many places, often poste restante.

Many are letters from women, some in beautiful handwriting, on thick

paper; others on scraps of paper, in painful hands, ill-spelt. A Countess

writes pitifully, imploring help; one protests her love, in spite of the

'many chagrins' he has caused her; another asks 'how they are to live

together'; another laments that a report has gone about that she is

secretly living with him, which may harm his reputation. Some are in

French, more in Italian. 'Mon cher Giacometto', writes one woman, in

French; 'Carissimo a Amatissimo', writes another, in Italian. These

letters from women are in some confusion, and are in need of a good deal

of sorting over and rearranging before their full extent can be realised.

Thus I found letters in the same handwriting separated by letters in

other handwritings; many are unsigned, or signed only by a single

initial; many are undated, or dated only with the day of the week or

month. There are a great many letters, dating from 1779 to 1786, signed

'Francesca Buschini,' a name which I cannot identify; they are written in

Italian, and one of them begins: 'Unico Mio vero Amico' ('my only true

friend'). Others are signed 'Virginia B.'; one of these is dated, 'Forli,

October 15, 1773.' There is also a 'Theresa B.,' who writes from Genoa. I

was at first unable to identify the writer of a whole series of letters

in French, very affectionate and intimate letters, usually unsigned,

occasionally signed 'B.' She calls herself votre petite amie; or she ends

with a half-smiling, half-reproachful 'goodnight, and sleep better than

I' In one letter, sent from Paris in 1759, she writes: 'Never believe me,

but when I tell you that I love you, and that I shall love you always: In

another letter, ill-spelt, as her letters often are, she writes: 'Be

assured that evil tongues, vapours, calumny, nothing can change my heart,

which is yours entirely, and has no will to change its master.' Now, it

seems to me that these letters must be from Manon Baletti, and that they

are the letters referred to in the sixth volume of the Memoirs. We read

there (page 60) how on Christmas Day, 1759, Casanova receives a letter

from Manon in Paris, announcing her marriage with 'M. Blondel, architect

to the King, and member of his Academy'; she returns him his letters, and

begs him to return hers, or burn them. Instead of doing so he allows

Esther to read them, intending to burn them afterwards. Esther begs to be

allowed to keep the letters, promising to 'preserve them religiously all

her life.' 'These letters,' he says, 'numbered more than two hundred, and

the shortest were of four pages: Certainly there are not two hundred of

them at Dux, but it seems to me highly probable that Casanova made a

final selection from Manon's letters, and that it is these which I have

found.

But, however this may be, I was fortunate enough to find the set of

letters which I was most anxious to find the letters from Henriette,

whose loss every writer on Casanova has lamented. Henriette, it will be

remembered, makes her first appearance at Cesena, in the year 1748; after

their meeting at Geneva, she reappears, romantically 'a propos',

twenty-two years later, at Aix in Provence; and she writes to Casanova

proposing 'un commerce epistolaire', asking him what he has done since

his escape from prison, and promising to do her best to tell him all that

has happened to her during the long interval. After quoting her letter,

he adds: 'I replied to her, accepting the correspondence that she offered

me, and telling her briefly all my vicissitudes. She related to me in

turn, in some forty letters, all the history of her life. If she dies

before me, I shall add these letters to these Memoirs; but to-day she is

still alive, and always happy, though now old.' It has never been known

what became of these letters, and why they were not added to the Memoirs.

I have found a great quantity of them, some signed with her married name

in full, 'Henriette de Schnetzmann,' and I am inclined to think that she

survived Casanova, for one of the letters is dated Bayreuth, 1798, the

year of Casanova's death. They are remarkably charming, written with a

mixture of piquancy and distinction; and I will quote the characteristic

beginning and end of the last letter I was able to find. It begins: 'No,

it is impossible to be sulky with you!' and ends: 'If I become vicious,

it is you, my Mentor, who make me so, and I cast my sins upon you. Even

if I were damned I should still be your most devoted friend, Henriette de

Schnetzmann.' Casanova was twenty-three when he met Henriette; now,

herself an old woman, she writes to him when he is seventy-three, as if

the fifty years that had passed were blotted out in the faithful

affection of her memory. How many more discreet and less changing lovers

have had the quality of constancy in change, to which this life-long

correspondence bears witness? Does it not suggest a view of Casanova not

quite the view of all the world? To me it shows the real man, who perhaps

of all others best understood what Shelley meant when he said:

True love in this differs from gold or clay

That to divide is not to take away.

But, though the letters from women naturally interested me the most, they

were only a certain proportion of the great mass of correspondence which

I turned over. There were letters from Carlo Angiolini, who was

afterwards to bring the manuscript of the Memoirs to Brockhaus; from

Balbi, the monk with whom Casanova escaped from the Piombi; from the

Marquis Albergati, playwright, actor, and eccentric, of whom there is

some account in the Memoirs; from the Marquis Mosca, 'a distinguished man

of letters whom I was anxious to see,' Casanova tells us in the same

volume in which he describes his visit to the Moscas at Pesaro; from

Zulian, brother of the Duchess of Fiano; from Richard Lorrain, 'bel

homme, ayant de l'esprit, le ton et le gout de la bonne societe', who

came to settle at Gorizia in 1773, while Casanova was there; from the

Procurator Morosini, whom he speaks of in the Memoirs as his 'protector,'

and as one of those through whom he obtained permission to return to

Venice. His other 'protector,' the 'avogador' Zaguri, had, says Casanova,

'since the affair of the Marquis Albergati, carried on a most interesting

correspondence with me'; and in fact I found a bundle of no less than a

hundred and thirty-eight letters from him, dating from 1784 to 1798.

Another bundle contains one hundred and seventy-two letters from Count

Lamberg. In the Memoirs Casanova says, referring to his visit to Augsburg

at the end of 1761:

I used to spend my evenings in a very agreeable manner at the house of

Count Max de Lamberg, who resided at the court of the Prince-Bishop with

the title of Grand Marshal. What particularly attached me to Count

Lamberg was his literary talent. A first-rate scholar, learned to a

degree, he has published several much esteemed works. I carried on an

exchange of letters with him which ended only with his death four years

ago in 1792.

Casanova tells us that, at his second visit to Augsburg in the early part

of 1767, he 'supped with Count Lamberg two or three times a week,' during

the four months he was there. It is with this year that the letters I

have found begin: they end with the year of his death, 1792. In his

'Memorial d'un Mondain' Lamberg refers to Casanova as 'a man known in

literature, a man of profound knowledge.' In the first edition of 1774,

he laments that 'a man such as M. de S. Galt' should not yet have been

taken back into favour by the Venetian government, and in the second

edition, 1775, rejoices over Casanova's return to Venice. Then there are

letters from Da Ponte, who tells the story of Casanova's curious

relations with Mme. d'Urfe, in his 'Memorie scritte da esso', 1829; from

Pittoni, Bono, and others mentioned in different parts of the Memoirs,

and from some dozen others who are not mentioned in them. The only

letters in the whole collection that have been published are those from

the Prince de Ligne and from Count Koenig.

IV.

Casanova tells us in his Memoirs that, during his later years at Dux, he

had only been able to 'hinder black melancholy from devouring his poor

existence, or sending him out of his mind,' by writing ten or twelve

hours a day. The copious manuscripts at Dux show us how persistently he

was at work on a singular variety of subjects, in addition to the

Memoirs, and to the various books which he published during those years.

We see him jotting down everything that comes into his head, for his own

amusement, and certainly without any thought of publication; engaging in

learned controversies, writing treatises on abstruse mathematical

problems, composing comedies to be acted before Count Waldstein's

neighbours, practising verse-writing in two languages, indeed with more

patience than success, writing philosophical dialogues in which God and

himself are the speakers, and keeping up an extensive correspondence,

both with distinguished men and with delightful women. His mental

activity, up to the age of seventy-three, is as prodigious as the

activity which he had expended in living a multiform and incalculable

life. As in life everything living had interested him so in his

retirement from life every idea makes its separate appeal to him; and he

welcomes ideas with the same impartiality with which he had welcomed

adventures. Passion has intellectualised itself, and remains not less

passionate. He wishes to do everything, to compete with every one; and it

is only after having spent seven years in heaping up miscellaneous

learning, and exercising his faculties in many directions, that he turns

to look back over his own past life, and to live it over again in memory,

as he writes down the narrative of what had interested him most in it. 'I

write in the hope that my history will never see the broad day light of

publication,' he tells us, scarcely meaning it, we may be sure, even in

the moment of hesitancy which may naturally come to him. But if ever a

book was written for the pleasure of writing it, it was this one; and an

autobiography written for oneself is not likely to be anything but frank.

'Truth is the only God I have ever adored,' he tells us: and we now know

how truthful he was in saying so. I have only summarised in this article

the most important confirmations of his exact accuracy in facts and

dates; the number could be extended indefinitely. In the manuscripts we

find innumerable further confirmations; and their chief value as

testimony is that they tell us nothing which we should not have already

known, if we had merely taken Casanova at his word. But it is not always

easy to take people at their own word, when they are writing about

themselves; and the world has been very loth to believe in Casanova as he

represents himself. It has been specially loth to believe that he is

telling the truth when he tells us about his adventures with women. But

the letters contained among these manuscripts shows us the women of

Casanova writing to him with all the fervour and all the fidelity which

he attributes to them; and they show him to us in the character of as

fervid and faithful a lover. In every fact, every detail, and in the

whole mental impression which they convey, these manuscripts bring before

us the Casanova of the Memoirs. As I seemed to come upon Casanova at

home, it was as if I came upon old friend, already perfectly known to me,

before I had made my pilgrimage to Dux.

1902

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE

A series of adventures wilder and more fantastic than the wildest of

romances, written down with the exactitude of a business diary; a view of

men and cities from Naples to Berlin, from Madrid and London to

Constantinople and St. Petersburg; the 'vie intime' of the eighteenth

century depicted by a man, who to-day sat with cardinals and saluted

crowned heads, and to morrow lurked in dens of profligacy and crime; a

book of confessions penned without reticence and without penitence; a

record of forty years of "occult" charlatanism; a collection of tales of

successful imposture, of 'bonnes fortunes', of marvellous escapes, of

transcendent audacity, told with the humour of Smollett and the delicate

wit of Voltaire. Who is there interested in men and letters, and in the

life of the past, who would not cry, "Where can such a book as this be

found?"

Yet the above catalogue is but a brief outline, a bare and meagre

summary, of the book known as "THE MEMOIRS OF CASANOVA"; a work

absolutely unique in literature. He who opens these wonderful pages is as

one who sits in a theatre and looks across the gloom, not on a

stage-play, but on another and a vanished world. The curtain draws up,

and suddenly a hundred and fifty years are rolled away, and in bright

light stands out before us the whole life of the past; the gay dresses,

the polished wit, the careless morals, and all the revel and dancing of

those merry years before the mighty deluge of the Revolution. The palaces

and marble stairs of old Venice are no longer desolate, but thronged with

scarlet-robed senators, prisoners with the doom of the Ten upon their

heads cross the Bridge of Sighs, at dead of night the nun slips out of

the convent gate to the dark canal where a gondola is waiting, we assist

at the 'parties fines' of cardinals, and we see the bank made at faro.

Venice gives place to the assembly rooms of Mrs. Cornely and the fast

taverns of the London of 1760; we pass from Versailles to the Winter

Palace of St. Petersburg in the days of Catherine, from the policy of the

Great Frederick to the lewd mirth of strolling-players, and the

presence-chamber of the Vatican is succeeded by an intrigue in a garret.

It is indeed a new experience to read this history of a man who,

refraining from nothing, has concealed nothing; of one who stood in the

courts of Louis the Magnificent before Madame de Pompadour and the nobles

of the Ancien Regime, and had an affair with an adventuress of Denmark

Street, Soho; who was bound over to keep the peace by Fielding, and knew

Cagliostro. The friend of popes and kings and noblemen, and of all the

male and female ruffians and vagabonds of Europe, abbe, soldier,

charlatan, gamester, financier, diplomatist, viveur, philosopher,

virtuoso, "chemist, fiddler, and buffoon," each of these, and all of

these was Giacomo Casanova, Chevalier de Seingalt, Knight of the Golden

Spur.

And not only are the Memoirs a literary curiosity; they are almost

equally curious from a bibliographical point of view. The manuscript was

written in French and came into the possession of the publisher

Brockhaus, of Leipzig, who had it translated into German, and printed.

From this German edition, M. Aubert de Vitry re-translated the work into

French, but omitted about a fourth of the matter, and this mutilated and

worthless version is frequently purchased by unwary bibliophiles. In the

year 1826, however, Brockhaus, in order presumably to protect his

property, printed the entire text of the original MS. in French, for the

first time, and in this complete form, containing a large number of

anecdotes and incidents not to be found in the spurious version, the work

was not acceptable to the authorities, and was consequently rigorously

suppressed. Only a few copies sent out for presentation or for review are

known to have escaped, and from one of these rare copies the present

translation has been made and solely for private circulation.

In conclusion, both translator and 'editeur' have done their utmost to

present the English Casanova in a dress worthy of the wonderful and witty

original.

AUTHOR'S PREFACE

I will begin with this confession: whatever I have done in the course of

my life, whether it be good or evil, has been done freely; I am a free

agent.

The doctrine of the Stoics or of any other sect as to the force of

Destiny is a bubble engendered by the imagination of man, and is near

akin to Atheism. I not only believe in one God, but my faith as a

Christian is also grafted upon that tree of philosophy which has never

spoiled anything.

I believe in the existence of an immaterial God, the Author and Master of

all beings and all things, and I feel that I never had any doubt of His

existence, from the fact that I have always relied upon His providence,

prayed to Him in my distress, and that He has always granted my prayers.

Despair brings death, but prayer does away with despair; and when a man

has prayed he feels himself supported by new confidence and endowed with

power to act. As to the means employed by the Sovereign Master of human

beings to avert impending dangers from those who beseech His assistance,

I confess that the knowledge of them is above the intelligence of man,

who can but wonder and adore. Our ignorance becomes our only resource,

and happy, truly happy; are those who cherish their ignorance! Therefore

must we pray to God, and believe that He has granted the favour we have

been praying for, even when in appearance it seems the reverse. As to the

position which our body ought to assume when we address ourselves to the

Creator, a line of Petrarch settles it:

'Con le ginocchia della mente inchine.'

Man is free, but his freedom ceases when he has no faith in it; and the

greater power he ascribes to faith, the more he deprives himself of that

power which God has given to him when He endowed him with the gift of

reason. Reason is a particle of the Creator's divinity. When we use it

with a spirit of humility and justice we are certain to please the Giver

of that precious gift. God ceases to be God only for those who can admit

the possibility of His non-existence, and that conception is in itself

the most severe punishment they can suffer.

Man is free; yet we must not suppose that he is at liberty to do

everything he pleases, for he becomes a slave the moment he allows his

actions to be ruled by passion. The man who has sufficient power over

himself to wait until his nature has recovered its even balance is the

truly wise man, but such beings are seldom met with.

The reader of these Memoirs will discover that I never had any fixed aim

before my eyes, and that my system, if it can be called a system, has

been to glide away unconcernedly on the stream of life, trusting to the

wind wherever it led. How many changes arise from such an independent

mode of life! My success and my misfortunes, the bright and the dark days

I have gone through, everything has proved to me that in this world,

either physical or moral, good comes out of evil just as well as evil

comes out of good. My errors will point to thinking men the various

roads, and will teach them the great art of treading on the brink of the

precipice without falling into it. It is only necessary to have courage,

for strength without self-confidence is useless. I have often met with

happiness after some imprudent step which ought to have brought ruin upon

me, and although passing a vote of censure upon myself I would thank God

for his mercy. But, by way of compensation, dire misfortune has befallen

me in consequence of actions prompted by the most cautious wisdom. This

would humble me; yet conscious that I had acted rightly I would easily

derive comfort from that conviction.

In spite of a good foundation of sound morals, the natural offspring of

the Divine principles which had been early rooted in my heart, I have

been throughout my life the victim of my senses; I have found delight in

losing the right path, I have constantly lived in the midst of error,

with no consolation but the consciousness of my being mistaken.

Therefore, dear reader, I trust that, far from attaching to my history

the character of impudent boasting, you will find in my Memoirs only the

characteristic proper to a general confession, and that my narratory

style will be the manner neither of a repenting sinner, nor of a man

ashamed to acknowledge his frolics. They are the follies inherent to

youth; I make sport of them, and, if you are kind, you will not yourself

refuse them a good-natured smile. You will be amused when you see that I

have more than once deceived without the slightest qualm of conscience,

both knaves and fools. As to the deceit perpetrated upon women, let it

pass, for, when love is in the way, men and women as a general rule dupe

each other. But on the score of fools it is a very different matter. I

always feel the greatest bliss when I recollect those I have caught in my

snares, for they generally are insolent, and so self-conceited that they

challenge wit. We avenge intellect when we dupe a fool, and it is a

victory not to be despised for a fool is covered with steel and it is

often very hard to find his vulnerable part. In fact, to gull a fool

seems to me an exploit worthy of a witty man. I have felt in my very

blood, ever since I was born, a most unconquerable hatred towards the

whole tribe of fools, and it arises from the fact that I feel myself a

blockhead whenever I am in their company. I am very far from placing them

in the same class with those men whom we call stupid, for the latter are

stupid only from deficient education, and I rather like them. I have met

with some of them--very honest fellows, who, with all their stupidity,

had a kind of intelligence and an upright good sense, which cannot be the

characteristics of fools. They are like eyes veiled with the cataract,

which, if the disease could be removed, would be very beautiful.

Dear reader, examine the spirit of this preface, and you will at once

guess at my purpose. I have written a preface because I wish you to know

me thoroughly before you begin the reading of my Memoirs. It is only in a

coffee-room or at a table d'hote that we like to converse with strangers.

I have written the history of my life, and I have a perfect right to do

so; but am I wise in throwing it before a public of which I know nothing

but evil? No, I am aware it is sheer folly, but I want to be busy, I want

to laugh, and why should I deny myself this gratification?

'Expulit elleboro morbum bilemque mero.'

An ancient author tells us somewhere, with the tone of a pedagogue, if

you have not done anything worthy of being recorded, at least write

something worthy of being read. It is a precept as beautiful as a diamond

of the first water cut in England, but it cannot be applied to me,

because I have not written either a novel, or the life of an illustrious

character. Worthy or not, my life is my subject, and my subject is my

life. I have lived without dreaming that I should ever take a fancy to

write the history of my life, and, for that very reason, my Memoirs may

claim from the reader an interest and a sympathy which they would not

have obtained, had I always entertained the design to write them in my

old age, and, still more, to publish them.

I have reached, in 1797, the age of three-score years and twelve; I can

not say, Vixi, and I could not procure a more agreeable pastime than to

relate my own adventures, and to cause pleasant laughter amongst the good

company listening to me, from which I have received so many tokens of

friendship, and in the midst of which I have ever lived. To enable me to

write well, I have only to think that my readers will belong to that

polite society:

'Quoecunque dixi, si placuerint, dictavit auditor.'

Should there be a few intruders whom I can not prevent from perusing my

Memoirs, I must find comfort in the idea that my history was not written

for them.

By recollecting the pleasures I have had formerly, I renew them, I enjoy

them a second time, while I laugh at the remembrance of troubles now

past, and which I no longer feel. A member of this great universe, I

speak to the air, and I fancy myself rendering an account of my

administration, as a steward is wont to do before leaving his situation.

For my future I have no concern, and as a true philosopher, I never would

have any, for I know not what it may be: as a Christian, on the other

hand, faith must believe without discussion, and the stronger it is, the

more it keeps silent. I know that I have lived because I have felt, and,

feeling giving me the knowledge of my existence, I know likewise that I

shall exist no more when I shall have ceased to feel.

Should I perchance still feel after my death, I would no longer have any

doubt, but I would most certainly give the lie to anyone asserting before

me that I was dead.

The history of my life must begin by the earliest circumstance which my

memory can evoke; it will therefore commence when I had attained the age

of eight years and four months. Before that time, if to think is to live

be a true axiom, I did not live, I could only lay claim to a state of

vegetation. The mind of a human being is formed only of comparisons made

in order to examine analogies, and therefore cannot precede the existence

of memory. The mnemonic organ was developed in my head only eight years

and four months after my birth; it is then that my soul began to be

susceptible of receiving impressions. How is it possible for an

immaterial substance, which can neither touch nor be touched to receive

impressions? It is a mystery which man cannot unravel.

A certain philosophy, full of consolation, and in perfect accord with

religion, pretends that the state of dependence in which the soul stands

in relation to the senses and to the organs, is only incidental and

transient, and that it will reach a condition of freedom and happiness

when the death of the body shall have delivered it from that state of

tyrannic subjection. This is very fine, but, apart from religion, where

is the proof of it all? Therefore, as I cannot, from my own information,

have a perfect certainty of my being immortal until the dissolution of my

body has actually taken place, people must kindly bear with me, if I am

in no hurry to obtain that certain knowledge, for, in my estimation, a

knowledge to be gained at the cost of life is a rather expensive piece of

information. In the mean time I worship God, laying every wrong action

under an interdict which I endeavour to respect, and I loathe the wicked

without doing them any injury. I only abstain from doing them any good,

in the full belief that we ought not to cherish serpents.

As I must likewise say a few words respecting my nature and my

temperament, I premise that the most indulgent of my readers is not

likely to be the most dishonest or the least gifted with intelligence.

I have had in turn every temperament; phlegmatic in my infancy; sanguine

in my youth; later on, bilious; and now I have a disposition which

engenders melancholy, and most likely will never change. I always made my

food congenial to my constitution, and my health was always excellent. I

learned very early that our health is always impaired by some excess

either of food or abstinence, and I never had any physician except

myself. I am bound to add that the excess in too little has ever proved

in me more dangerous than the excess in too much; the last may cause

indigestion, but the first causes death.

Now, old as I am, and although enjoying good digestive organs, I must

have only one meal every day; but I find a set-off to that privation in

my delightful sleep, and in the ease which I experience in writing down

my thoughts without having recourse to paradox or sophism, which would be

calculated to deceive myself even more than my readers, for I never could

make up my mind to palm counterfeit coin upon them if I knew it to be

such.

The sanguine temperament rendered me very sensible to the attractions of

voluptuousness: I was always cheerful and ever ready to pass from one

enjoyment to another, and I was at the same time very skillful in

inventing new pleasures. Thence, I suppose, my natural disposition to

make fresh acquaintances, and to break with them so readily, although

always for a good reason, and never through mere fickleness. The errors

caused by temperament are not to be corrected, because our temperament is

perfectly independent of our strength: it is not the case with our

character. Heart and head are the constituent parts of character;

temperament has almost nothing to do with it, and, therefore, character

is dependent upon education, and is susceptible of being corrected and

improved.

I leave to others the decision as to the good or evil tendencies of my

character, but such as it is it shines upon my countenance, and there it

can easily be detected by any physiognomist. It is only on the fact that

character can be read; there it lies exposed to the view. It is worthy of

remark that men who have no peculiar cast of countenance, and there are a

great many such men, are likewise totally deficient in peculiar

characteristics, and we may establish the rule that the varieties in

physiognomy are equal to the differences in character. I am aware that

throughout my life my actions have received their impulse more from the

force of feeling than from the wisdom of reason, and this has led me to

acknowledge that my conduct has been dependent upon my nature more than

upon my mind; both are generally at war, and in the midst of their

continual collisions I have never found in me sufficient mind to balance

my nature, or enough strength in my nature to counteract the power of my

mind. But enough of this, for there is truth in the old saying: 'Si

brevis esse volo, obscurus fio', and I believe that, without offending

against modesty, I can apply to myself the following words of my dear

Virgil:

'Nec sum adeo informis: nuper me in littore vidi

Cum placidum ventis staret mare.'

The chief business of my life has always been to indulge my senses; I

never knew anything of greater importance. I felt myself born for the

fair sex, I have ever loved it dearly, and I have been loved by it as

often and as much as I could. I have likewise always had a great weakness

for good living, and I ever felt passionately fond of every object which

excited my curiosity.

I have had friends who have acted kindly towards me, and it has been my

good fortune to have it in my power to give them substantial proofs of my

gratitude. I have had also bitter enemies who have persecuted me, and

whom I have not crushed simply because I could not do it. I never would

have forgiven them, had I not lost the memory of all the injuries they

had heaped upon me. The man who forgets does not forgive, he only loses

the remembrance of the harm inflicted on him; forgiveness is the

offspring of a feeling of heroism, of a noble heart, of a generous mind,

whilst forgetfulness is only the result of a weak memory, or of an easy

carelessness, and still oftener of a natural desire for calm and

quietness. Hatred, in the course of time, kills the unhappy wretch who

delights in nursing it in his bosom.

Should anyone bring against me an accusation of sensuality he would be

wrong, for all the fierceness of my senses never caused me to neglect any

of my duties. For the same excellent reason, the accusation of

drunkenness ought not to have been brought against Homer:

'Laudibus arguitur vini vinosus Homerus.'

I have always been fond of highly-seasoned, rich dishes, such as macaroni

prepared by a skilful Neapolitan cook, the olla-podrida of the Spaniards,

the glutinous codfish from Newfoundland, game with a strong flavour, and

cheese the perfect state of which is attained when the tiny animaculae

formed from its very essence begin to shew signs of life. As for women, I

have always found the odour of my beloved ones exceeding pleasant.

What depraved tastes! some people will exclaim. Are you not ashamed to

confess such inclinations without blushing! Dear critics, you make me

laugh heartily. Thanks to my coarse tastes, I believe myself happier than

other men, because I am convinced that they enhance my enjoyment. Happy

are those who know how to obtain pleasures without injury to anyone;

insane are those who fancy that the Almighty can enjoy the sufferings,

the pains, the fasts and abstinences which they offer to Him as a

sacrifice, and that His love is granted only to those who tax themselves

so foolishly. God can only demand from His creatures the practice of

virtues the seed of which He has sown in their soul, and all He has given

unto us has been intended for our happiness; self-love, thirst for

praise, emulation, strength, courage, and a power of which nothing can

deprive us--the power of self-destruction, if, after due calculation,

whether false or just, we unfortunately reckon death to be advantageous.

This is the strongest proof of our moral freedom so much attacked by

sophists. Yet this power of self-destruction is repugnant to nature, and

has been rightly opposed by every religion.

A so-called free-thinker told me at one time that I could not consider

myself a philosopher if I placed any faith in revelation. But when we

accept it readily in physics, why should we reject it in religious

matters? The form alone is the point in question. The spirit speaks to

the spirit, and not to the ears. The principles of everything we are

acquainted with must necessarily have been revealed to those from whom we

have received them by the great, supreme principle, which contains them

all. The bee erecting its hive, the swallow building its nest, the ant

constructing its cave, and the spider warping its web, would never have

done anything but for a previous and everlasting revelation. We must

either believe that it is so, or admit that matter is endowed with

thought. But as we dare not pay such a compliment to matter, let us stand

by revelation.

The great philosopher, who having deeply studied nature, thought he had

found the truth because he acknowledged nature as God, died too soon. Had

he lived a little while longer, he would have gone much farther, and yet

his journey would have been but a short one, for finding himself in his

Author, he could not have denied Him: In Him we move and have our being.

He would have found Him inscrutable, and thus would have ended his

journey.

God, great principle of all minor principles, God, who is Himself without

a principle, could not conceive Himself, if, in order to do it, He

required to know His own principle.

Oh, blissful ignorance! Spinosa, the virtuous Spinosa, died before he

could possess it. He would have died a learned man and with a right to

the reward his virtue deserved, if he had only supposed his soul to be

immortal!

It is not true that a wish for reward is unworthy of real virtue, and

throws a blemish upon its purity. Such a pretension, on the contrary,

helps to sustain virtue, man being himself too weak to consent to be

virtuous only for his own 'gratification. I hold as a myth that

Amphiaraus who preferred to be good than to seem good. In fact, I do not

believe there is an honest man alive without some pretension, and here is

mine.

I pretend to the friendship, to the esteem, to the gratitude of my

readers. I claim their gratitude, if my Memoirs can give them instruction

and pleasure; I claim their esteem if, rendering me justice, they find

more good qualities in me than faults, and I claim their friendship as

soon as they deem me worthy of it by the candour and the good faith with

which I abandon myself to their judgment, without disguise and exactly as

I am in reality. They will find that I have always had such sincere love

for truth, that I have often begun by telling stories for the purpose of

getting truth to enter the heads of those who could not appreciate its

charms. They will not form a wrong opinion of me when they see one

emptying the purse of my friends to satisfy my fancies, for those friends

entertained idle schemes, and by giving them the hope of success I

trusted to disappointment to cure them. I would deceive them to make them

wiser, and I did not consider myself guilty, for I applied to my own

enjoyment sums of money which would have been lost in the vain pursuit of

possessions denied by nature; therefore I was not actuated by any

avaricious rapacity. I might think myself guilty if I were rich now, but

I have nothing. I have squandered everything; it is my comfort and my

justification. The money was intended for extravagant follies, and by

applying it to my own frolics I did not turn it into a very different,

channel.

If I were deceived in my hope to please, I candidly confess I would

regret it, but not sufficiently so to repent having written my Memoirs,

for, after all, writing them has given me pleasure. Oh, cruel ennui! It

must be by mistake that those who have invented the torments of hell have

forgotten to ascribe thee the first place among them. Yet I am bound to

own that I entertain a great fear of hisses; it is too natural a fear for

me to boast of being insensible to them, and I cannot find any solace in

the idea that, when these Memoirs are published, I shall be no more. I

cannot think without a shudder of contracting any obligation towards

death: I hate death; for, happy or miserable, life is the only blessing

which man possesses, and those who do not love it are unworthy of it. If

we prefer honour to life, it is because life is blighted by infamy; and

if, in the alternative, man sometimes throws away his life, philosophy

must remain silent.

Oh, death, cruel death! Fatal law which nature necessarily rejects

because thy very office is to destroy nature! Cicero says that death

frees us from all pains and sorrows, but this great philosopher books all

the expense without taking the receipts into account. I do not recollect

if, when he wrote his 'Tusculan Disputations', his own Tullia was dead.

Death is a monster which turns away from the great theatre an attentive

hearer before the end of the play which deeply interests him, and this is

reason enough to hate it.

All my adventures are not to be found in these Memoirs; I have left out

those which might have offended the persons who have played a sorry part

therein. In spite of this reserve, my readers will perhaps often think me

indiscreet, and I am sorry for it. Should I perchance become wiser before

I give up the ghost, I might burn every one of these sheets, but now I

have not courage enough to do it.

It may be that certain love scenes will be considered too explicit, but

let no one blame me, unless it be for lack of skill, for I ought not to

be scolded because, in my old age, I can find no other enjoyment but that

which recollections of the past afford to me. After all, virtuous and

prudish readers are at liberty to skip over any offensive pictures, and I

think it my duty to give them this piece of advice; so much the worse for

those who may not read my preface; it is no fault of mine if they do not,

for everyone ought to know that a preface is to a book what the play-bill

is to a comedy; both must be read.

My Memoirs are not written for young persons who, in order to avoid false

steps and slippery roads, ought to spend their youth in blissful

ignorance, but for those who, having thorough experience of life, are no

longer exposed to temptation, and who, having but too often gone through

the fire, are like salamanders, and can be scorched by it no more. True

virtue is but a habit, and I have no hesitation in saying that the really

virtuous are those persons who can practice virtue without the slightest

trouble; such persons are always full of toleration, and it is to them

that my Memoirs are addressed.

I have written in French, and not in Italian, because the French language

is more universal than mine, and the purists, who may criticise in my

style some Italian turns will be quite right, but only in case it should

prevent them from understanding me clearly. The Greeks admired

Theophrastus in spite of his Eresian style, and the Romans delighted in

their Livy in spite of his Patavinity. Provided I amuse my readers, it

seems to me that I can claim the same indulgence. After all, every

Italian reads Algarotti with pleasure, although his works are full of

French idioms.

There is one thing worthy of notice: of all the living languages

belonging to the republic of letters, the French tongue is the only one

which has been condemned by its masters never to borrow in order to

become richer, whilst all other languages, although richer in words than

the French, plunder from it words and constructions of sentences,

whenever they find that by such robbery they add something to their own

beauty. Yet those who borrow the most from the French, are the most

forward in trumpeting the poverty of that language, very likely thinking

that such an accusation justifies their depredations. It is said that the

French language has attained the apogee of its beauty, and that the

smallest foreign loan would spoil it, but I make bold to assert that this

is prejudice, for, although it certainly is the most clear, the most

logical of all languages, it would be great temerity to affirm that it

can never go farther or higher than it has gone. We all recollect that,

in the days of Lulli, there was but one opinion of his music, yet Rameau

came and everything was changed. The new impulse given to the French

nation may open new and unexpected horizons, and new beauties, fresh

perfections, may spring up from new combinations and from new wants.

The motto I have adopted justifies my digressions, and all the

commentaries, perhaps too numerous, in which I indulge upon my various

exploits: 'Nequidquam sapit qui sibi non sapit'. For the same reason I

have always felt a great desire to receive praise and applause from

polite society:

'Excitat auditor stadium, laudataque virtus

Crescit, et immensum gloria calcar habet.

I would willingly have displayed here the proud axiom: 'Nemo laeditur

nisi a se ipso', had I not feared to offend the immense number of persons

who, whenever anything goes wrong with them, are wont to exclaim, "It is

no fault of mine!" I cannot deprive them of that small particle of

comfort, for, were it not for it, they would soon feel hatred for

themselves, and self-hatred often leads to the fatal idea of

self-destruction.

As for myself I always willingly acknowledge my own self as the principal

cause of every good or of every evil which may befall me; therefore I

have always found myself capable of being my own pupil, and ready to love

my teacher.

THE MEMOIRS OF

JACQUES CASANOVA

CHAPTER I

My Family Pedigree--My Childhood

Don Jacob Casanova, the illegitimate son of Don Francisco Casanova, was a

native of Saragosa, the capital of Aragon, and in the year of 1428 he

carried off Dona Anna Palofax from her convent, on the day after she had

taken the veil. He was secretary to King Alfonso. He ran away with her to

Rome, where, after one year of imprisonment, the pope, Martin III.,

released Anna from her vows, and gave them the nuptial blessing at the

instance of Don Juan Casanova, majordomo of the Vatican, and uncle of Don

Jacob. All the children born from that marriage died in their infancy,

with the exception of Don Juan, who, in 1475, married Donna Eleonora

Albini, by whom he had a son, Marco Antonio.

In 1481, Don Juan, having killed an officer of the king of Naples, was

compelled to leave Rome, and escaped to Como with his wife and his son;

but having left that city to seek his fortune, he died while traveling

with Christopher Columbus in the year 1493.

Marco Antonio became a noted poet of the school of Martial, and was

secretary to Cardinal Pompeo Colonna.

The satire against Giulio de Medicis, which we find in his works, having

made it necessary for him to leave Rome, he returned to Como, where he

married Abondia Rezzonica. The same Giulio de Medicis, having become pope

under the name of Clement VII, pardoned him and called him back to Rome

with his wife. The city having been taken and ransacked by the

Imperialists in 1526, Marco Antonio died there from an attack of the

plague; otherwise he would have died of misery, the soldiers of Charles

V. having taken all he possessed. Pierre Valerien speaks of him in his

work 'de infelicitate litteratorum'.

Three months after his death, his wife gave birth to Jacques Casanova,

who died in France at a great age, colonel in the army commanded by

Farnese against Henri, king of Navarre, afterwards king of France. He had

left in the city of Parma a son who married Theresa Conti, from whom he

had Jacques, who, in the year 1681, married Anna Roli. Jacques had two

sons, Jean-Baptiste and Gaetan-Joseph-Jacques. The eldest left Parma in

1712, and was never heard of; the other also went away in 1715, being

only nineteen years old.

This is all I have found in my father's diary: from my mother's lips I

have heard the following particulars:

Gaetan-Joseph-Jacques left his family, madly in love with an actress

named Fragoletta, who performed the chambermaids. In his poverty, he

determined to earn a living by making the most of his own person. At

first he gave himself up to dancing, and five years afterwards became an

actor, making himself conspicuous by his conduct still more than by his

talent.

Whether from fickleness or from jealousy, he abandoned the Fragoletta,

and joined in Venice a troop of comedians then giving performances at the

Saint-Samuel Theatre. Opposite the house in which he had taken his

lodging resided a shoemaker, by name Jerome Farusi, with his wife Marzia,

and Zanetta, their only daughter--a perfect beauty sixteen years of age.

The young actor fell in love with this girl, succeeded in gaining her

affection, and in obtaining her consent to a runaway match. It was the

only way to win her, for, being an actor, he never could have had

Marzia's consent, still less Jerome's, as in their eyes a player was a

most awful individual. The young lovers, provided with the necessary

certificates and accompanied by two witnesses, presented themselves

before the Patriarch of Venice, who performed over them the marriage

ceremony. Marzia, Zanetta's mother, indulged in a good deal of

exclamation, and the father died broken-hearted.

I was born nine months afterwards, on the 2nd of April, 1725.

The following April my mother left me under the care of her own mother,

who had forgiven her as soon as she had heard that my father had promised

never to compel her to appear on the stage. This is a promise which all

actors make to the young girls they marry, and which they never fulfil,

simply because their wives never care much about claiming from them the

performance of it. Moreover, it turned out a very fortunate thing for my

mother that she had studied for the stage, for nine years later, having

been left a widow with six children, she could not have brought them up

if it had not been for the resources she found in that profession.

I was only one year old when my father left me to go to London, where he

had an engagement. It was in that great city that my mother made her

first appearance on the stage, and in that city likewise that she gave

birth to my brother Francois, a celebrated painter of battles, now

residing in Vienna, where he has followed his profession since 1783.

Towards the end of the year 1728 my mother returned to Venice with her

husband, and as she had become an actress she continued her artistic

life. In 1730 she was delivered of my brother Jean, who became Director

of the Academy of painting at Dresden, and died there in 1795; and during

the three following years she became the mother of two daughters, one of

whom died at an early age, while the other married in Dresden, where she

still lived in 1798. I had also a posthumous brother, who became a

priest; he died in Rome fifteen years ago.

Let us now come to the dawn of my existence in the character of a

thinking being.

The organ of memory began to develop itself in me at the beginning of

August, 1733. I had at that time reached the age of eight years and four

months. Of what may have happened to me before that period I have not the

faintest recollection. This is the circumstance.

I was standing in the corner of a room bending towards the wall,

supporting my head, and my eyes fixed upon a stream of blood flowing from

my nose to the ground. My grandmother, Marzia, whose pet I was, came to

me, bathed my face with cold water, and, unknown to everyone in the

house, took me with her in a gondola as far as Muran, a thickly-populated

island only half a league distant from Venice.

Alighting from the gondola, we enter a wretched hole, where we find an

old woman sitting on a rickety bed, holding a black cat in her arms, with

five or six more purring around her. The two old cronies held together a

long discourse of which, most likely, I was the subject. At the end of

the dialogue, which was carried on in the patois of Forli, the witch

having received a silver ducat from my grandmother, opened a box, took me

in her arms, placed me in the box and locked me in it, telling me not to

be frightened--a piece of advice which would certainly have had the

contrary effect, if I had had any wits about me, but I was stupefied. I

kept myself quiet in a corner of the box, holding a handkerchief to my

nose because it was still bleeding, and otherwise very indifferent to the

uproar going on outside. I could hear in turn, laughter, weeping,

singing, screams, shrieks, and knocking against the box, but for all that

I cared nought. At last I am taken out of the box; the blood stops

flowing. The wonderful old witch, after lavishing caresses upon me, takes

off my clothes, lays me on the bed, burns some drugs, gathers the smoke

in a sheet which she wraps around me, pronounces incantations, takes the

sheet off me, and gives me five sugar-plums of a very agreeable taste.

Then she immediately rubs my temples and the nape of my neck with an

ointment exhaling a delightful perfume, and puts my clothes on me again.

She told me that my haemorrhage would little by little leave me, provided

I should never disclose to any one what she had done to cure me, and she

threatened me, on the other hand, with the loss of all my blood and with

death, should I ever breathe a word concerning those mysteries. After

having thus taught me my lesson, she informed me that a beautiful lady

would pay me a visit during the following night, and that she would make

me happy, on condition that I should have sufficient control over myself

never to mention to anyone my having received such a visit. Upon this we

left and returned home.

I fell asleep almost as soon as I was in bed, without giving a thought to

the beautiful visitor I was to receive; but, waking up a few hours

afterwards, I saw, or fancied I saw, coming down the chimney, a dazzling

woman, with immense hoops, splendidly attired, and wearing on her head a

crown set with precious stones, which seemed to me sparkling with fire.

With slow steps, but with a majestic and sweet countenance, she came

forward and sat on my bed; then taking several small boxes from her

pocket, she emptied their contents over my head, softly whispering a few

words, and after giving utterance to a long speech, not a single word of

which I understood, she kissed me and disappeared the same way she had

come. I soon went again to sleep.

The next morning, my grandmother came to dress me, and the moment she was

near my bed, she cautioned me to be silent, threatening me with death if

I dared to say anything respecting my night's adventures. This command,

laid upon me by the only woman who had complete authority over me, and

whose orders I was accustomed to obey blindly, caused me to remember the

vision, and to store it, with the seal of secrecy, in the inmost corner

of my dawning memory. I had not, however, the slightest inclination to

mention the circumstances to anyone; in the first place, because I did

not suppose it would interest anybody, and in the second because I would

not have known whom to make a confidant of. My disease had rendered me

dull and retired; everybody pitied me and left me to myself; my life was

considered likely to be but a short one, and as to my parents, they never

spoke to me.

After the journey to Muran, and the nocturnal visit of the fairy, I

continued to have bleeding at the nose, but less from day to day, and my

memory slowly developed itself. I learned to read in less than a month.

It would be ridiculous, of course, to attribute this cure to such

follies, but at the same time I think it would be wrong to assert that

they did not in any way contribute to it. As far as the apparition of the

beautiful queen is concerned, I have always deemed it to be a dream,

unless it should have been some masquerade got up for the occasion, but

it is not always in the druggist's shop that are found the best remedies

for severe diseases. Our ignorance is every day proved by some wonderful

phenomenon, and I believe this to be the reason why it is so difficult to

meet with a learned man entirely untainted with superstition. We know, as

a matter of course, that there never have been any sorcerers in this

world, yet it is true that their power has always existed in the

estimation of those to whom crafty knaves have passed themselves off as

such. 'Somnio nocturnos lemures portentaque Thessalia vides'.

Many things become real which, at first, had no existence but in our

imagination, and, as a natural consequence, many facts which have been

attributed to Faith may not always have been miraculous, although they

are true miracles for those who lend to Faith a boundless power.

The next circumstance of any importance to myself which I recollect

happened three months after my trip to Muran, and six weeks before my

father's death. I give it to my readers only to convey some idea of the

manner in which my nature was expanding.

One day, about the middle of November, I was with my brother Francois,

two years younger than I, in my father's room, watching him attentively

as he was working at optics. A large lump of crystal, round and cut into

facets, attracted my attention. I took it up, and having brought it near

my eyes I was delighted to see that it multiplied objects. The wish to

possess myself of it at once got hold of me, and seeing myself unobserved

I took my opportunity and hid it in my pocket.

A few minutes after this my father looked about for his crystal, and

unable to find it, he concluded that one of us must have taken it. My

brother asserted that he had not touched it, and I, although guilty, said

the same; but my father, satisfied that he could not be mistaken,

threatened to search us and to thrash the one who had told him a story. I

pretended to look for the crystal in every corner of the room, and,

watching my opportunity I slyly slipped it in the pocket of my brother's

jacket. At first I was sorry for what I had done, for I might as well

have feigned to find the crystal somewhere about the room; but the evil

deed was past recall. My father, seeing that we were looking in vain,

lost patience, searched us, found the unlucky ball of crystal in the

pocket of the innocent boy, and inflicted upon him the promised

thrashing. Three or four years later I was foolish enough to boast before

my brother of the trick I had then played on him; he never forgave me,

and has never failed to take his revenge whenever the opportunity

offered.

However, having at a later period gone to confession, and accused myself

to the priest of the sin with every circumstance surrounding it, I gained

some knowledge which afforded me great satisfaction. My confessor, who

was a Jesuit, told me that by that deed I had verified the meaning of my

first name, Jacques, which, he said, meant, in Hebrew, "supplanter," and

that God had changed for that reason the name of the ancient patriarch

into that of Israel, which meant "knowing." He had deceived his brother

Esau.

Six weeks after the above adventure my father was attacked with an

abscess in the head which carried him off in a week. Dr. Zambelli first

gave him oppilative remedies, and, seeing his mistake, he tried to mend

it by administering castoreum, which sent his patient into convulsions

and killed him. The abscess broke out through the ear one minute after

his death, taking its leave after killing him, as if it had no longer any

business with him. My father departed this life in the very prime of his

manhood. He was only thirty-six years of age, but he was followed to his

grave by the regrets of the public, and more particularly of all the

patricians amongst whom he was held as above his profession, not less on

account of his gentlemanly behaviour than on account of his extensive

knowledge in mechanics.

Two days before his death, feeling that his end was at hand, my father

expressed a wish to see us all around his bed, in the presence of his

wife and of the Messieurs Grimani, three Venetian noblemen whose

protection he wished to entreat in our favour. After giving us his

blessing, he requested our mother, who was drowned in tears, to give her

sacred promise that she would not educate any of us for the stage, on

which he never would have appeared himself had he not been led to it by

an unfortunate attachment. My mother gave her promise, and the three

noblemen said that they would see to its being faithfully kept.

Circumstances helped our mother to fulfill her word.

At that time my mother had been pregnant for six months, and she was

allowed to remain away from the stage until after Easter. Beautiful and

young as she was, she declined all the offers of marriage which were made

to her, and, placing her trust in Providence, she courageously devoted

herself to the task of bringing up her young family.

She considered it a duty to think of me before the others, not so much

from a feeling of preference as in consequence of my disease, which had

such an effect upon me that it was difficult to know what to do with me.

I was very weak, without any appetite, unable to apply myself to

anything, and I had all the appearance of an idiot. Physicians disagreed

as to the cause of the disease. He loses, they would say, two pounds of

blood every week; yet there cannot be more than sixteen or eighteen

pounds in his body. What, then, can cause so abundant a bleeding? One

asserted that in me all the chyle turned into blood; another was of

opinion that the air I was breathing must, at each inhalation, increase

the quantity of blood in my lungs, and contended that this was the reason

for which I always kept my mouth open. I heard of it all six years

afterward from M. Baffo, a great friend of my late father.

This M. Baffo consulted the celebrated Doctor Macop, of Padua, who sent

him his opinion by writing. This consultation, which I have still in my

possession, says that our blood is an elastic fluid which is liable to

diminish or to increase in thickness, but never in quantity, and that my

haemorrhage could only proceed from the thickness of the mass of my

blood, which relieved itself in a natural way in order to facilitate

circulation. The doctor added that I would have died long before, had not

nature, in its wish for life, assisted itself, and he concluded by

stating that the cause of the thickness of my blood could only be

ascribed to the air I was breathing and that consequently I must have a

change of air, or every hope of cure be abandoned. He thought likewise,

that the stupidity so apparent on my countenance was caused by nothing

else but the thickness of my blood.

M. Baffo, a man of sublime genius, a most lascivious, yet a great and

original poet, was therefore instrumental in bringing about the decision

which was then taken to send me to Padua, and to him I am indebted for my

life. He died twenty years after, the last of his ancient patrician

family, but his poems, although obscene, will give everlasting fame to

his name. The state-inquisitors of Venice have contributed to his

celebrity by their mistaken strictness. Their persecutions caused his

manuscript works to become precious. They ought to have been aware that

despised things are forgotten.

As soon as the verdict given by Professor Macop had been approved of, the

Abbe Grimani undertook to find a good boarding-house in Padua for me,

through a chemist of his acquaintance who resided in that city. His name

was Ottaviani, and he was also an antiquarian of some repute. In a few

days the boarding-house was found, and on the 2nd day of April, 1734, on

the very day I had accomplished my ninth year, I was taken to Padua in a

'burchiello', along the Brenta Canal. We embarked at ten o'clock in the

evening, immediately after supper.

The 'burchiello' may be considered a small floating house. There is a

large saloon with a smaller cabin at each end, and rooms for servants

fore and aft. It is a long square with a roof, and cut on each side by

glazed windows with shutters. The voyage takes eight hours. M. Grimani,

M. Baffo, and my mother accompanied me. I slept with her in the saloon,

and the two friends passed the night in one of the cabins. My mother rose

at day break, opened one of the windows facing the bed, and the rays of

the rising sun, falling on my eyes, caused me to open them. The bed was

too low for me to see the land; I could see through the window only the

tops of the trees along the river. The boat was sailing with such an even

movement that I could not realize the fact of our moving, so that the

trees, which, one after the other, were rapidly disappearing from my

sight, caused me an extreme surprise. "Ah, dear mother!" I exclaimed,

"what is this? the trees are walking!" At that very moment the two

noblemen came in, and reading astonishment on my countenance, they asked

me what my thoughts were so busy about. "How is it," I answered, "that

the trees are walking."

They all laughed, but my mother, heaving a great sigh, told me, in a tone

of deep pity, "The boat is moving, the trees are not. Now dress

yourself."

I understood at once the reason of the phenomenon. "Then it may be," said

I, "that the sun does not move, and that we, on the contrary, are

revolving from west to east." At these words my good mother fairly

screamed. M. Grimani pitied my foolishness, and I remained dismayed,

grieved, and ready to cry. M. Baffo brought me life again. He rushed to

me, embraced me tenderly, and said, "Thou are right, my child. The sun

does not move; take courage, give heed to your reasoning powers and let

others laugh."

My mother, greatly surprised, asked him whether he had taken leave of his

senses to give me such lessons; but the philosopher, not even

condescending to answer her, went on sketching a theory in harmony with

my young and simple intelligence. This was the first real pleasure I

enjoyed in my life. Had it not been for M. Baffo, this circumstance might

have been enough to degrade my understanding; the weakness of credulity

would have become part of my mind. The ignorance of the two others would

certainly have blunted in me the edge of a faculty which, perhaps, has

not carried me very far in my after life, but to which alone I feel that

I am indebted for every particle of happiness I enjoy when I look into

myself.

We reached Padua at an early hour and went to Ottaviani's house; his wife

loaded me with caresses. I found there five or six children, amongst them

a girl of eight years, named Marie, and another of seven, Rose, beautiful

as a seraph. Ten years later Marie became the wife of the broker Colonda,

and Rose, a few years afterwards, married a nobleman, Pierre Marcello,

and had one son and two daughters, one of whom was wedded to M. Pierre

Moncenigo, and the other to a nobleman of the Carrero family. This last

marriage was afterwards nullified. I shall have, in the course of events,

to speak of all these persons, and that is my reason for mentioning their

names here.

Ottaviani took us at once to the house where I was to board. It was only

a few yards from his own residence, at Sainte-Marie d'Advance, in the

parish of Saint-Michel, in the house of an old Sclavonian woman, who let

the first floor to Signora Mida, wife of a Sclavonian colonel. My small

trunk was laid open before the old woman, to whom was handed an inventory

of all its contents, together with six sequins for six months paid in

advance. For this small sum she undertook to feed me, to keep me clean,

and to send me to a day-school. Protesting that it was not enough, she

accepted these terms. I was kissed and strongly commanded to be always

obedient and docile, and I was left with her.

In this way did my family get rid of me.