Volume I Part 1 (2/2)

I ca which I, found, juether on the sa-bills, accounts, hotel bills, lists of letters written, first drafts of letters with ical 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 Ito follow, such as: 'Reflexions on respiration, on the true cause of youth-the crows'; a newwhich is a long printed list of perfuue, 25th October 1790, on the thirty-seventh balloon ascent of Blanchard; thanks to so 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, froets 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 Roested by soeneral considerations; or else begin with general considerations, and end with a case in point Thus, for instance, a fragins: 'A coild the pill is a positive i but a charlatan; the ht to have spit in his face, but the monarch treoisme,' dated, 'Dux, this 27th June, 1769,' contains, in the midst of various reflections, an offer to let his 'apparteh money to 'tranquillise for six ue' Another ins 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 co 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 tohim; but what is one to do! Either onea 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 theseon paper He uses scraps of paper (soe 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 s 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 h er that if there is any difference, he eigh less I wager that diamond powder has not sufficient force to kill a man

Side by side with these fanciful excursions into science, coebra, which traces its progress since the year 1494, before which 'it had only arrived at the solution of probleree, 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 becoes, 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 dogreduced to the extremity of life, to ask for the sacraments, and to cover his body with more relics than St Louis had at A with the tone of the Meood, and as virtuous as you please, ought not to take it ill that a man, carried away by her char their conquest If this man cannot please her by any ht never to take offence at it, nor treat hientle, and pity hih to keep invincibly hold upon her own duty

Occasionally he touches upon aesthetical ins 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 ht 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 towas dead, and asked me if the Comte de Waldstein had in the library the illustration of the Villa d'Altichiero, which the Eue, and when I answered 'yes,' he gave an equivocal laugh A ht tell the Eneur? It is not a secret, 'Is His Majesty coo 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 yptian prints'

The E, 6th October, how I e 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 ed to lie again in saying that we have all the Italian poets If the Emperor comes to Dux, I shall kill htful spot,' says Casanova in one of the ht be for e is independent of the place which I inhabit When I do not sleep I drea I blacken paper, then I read, and most often reject all thatpaper, on every occasion, and for every purpose In one bundle I found an unfinished story about Roland, and some adventure o from sleep, 19th May 1789'; then a 'Short Reflection of a Philosopher who finds hi out of bed on 13th October 1793, day dedicated to St Lucy,cryptograms, is headed 'Grae of a treatise on The Duplication of the Hexahedron, deeometrically to all the Universities and all the Academies of Europe' [See Charles Henry, Les Connaissances Mathimatiques de Casanova Rome, 1883] There are innues, 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 'Icosa to be 'translated froinal work of Casanova; 'Philocalies sur les Sottises des Mortels,' a longof 'Le Pollmarque, ou la Caloicomedie en trois actes, composed a Dux dans le ain under the fornette e,' 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 thy 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 thein 1788; and, having read it in the Marcian Library at Venice, I anant docu Swiss, who had the talent to coraphy'

III

We co to the Me these are several atteradually 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 sies are nuh it is described as Extrait, it see 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, whohter, 'hter of Therese Pompeati, whom I had left at London' It is curious that this very i 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 thisto 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 coiven to the world

Another reat piquancy the whole story of the Abbe de Brosses' oint 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