Volume VI Part 110 (1/1)
Scattered through the Mee Soinal text, others possibly added when he revised the text in 1797 These vary fro on Casanova's state of mind at the moment he wrote them:
”Now that I aer susceptible of such follies But alas! that is the very thing which causes e which offers only what I already know, unless I should take up a gazette”
”Age has cal therown old and my memory has kept all the freshness of youth”
”No, I have not forgotten her [Henriette]; for even nohen my head is covered hite hair, the recollection of her is still a source of happiness for my heart”
”A scene which, even now, excites e, that cruel and unavoidable disease, coood health, in spite of myself”
”Now that I am but the shadow of the once brilliant Casanova, I love to chatter”
”Now that age has whitened ination does not take such a high flight and I think differently”
”What e a heart as warth necessary to secure a single day as blissful as those which I owed to this charain and feel onceyears which separateintoI alooue, I say to e, thou art only worthy of dwelling in hell”
”The longer I live, the more interest I take in my papers They are the treasure which attaches me to life and h the Me very well that the end, even of his cherished memories, is not far distant
In 1797, Casanova relates an a incident, which resulted in the loss of the first three chapters of the second voluirl at Dux who took the papers ”old, written upon, covered with scribbling and erasures,”
for ”her own purposes,” thus necessitating a re-writing, ”which I e,” of these chapters Thirty years before, Casanova would doubtless have iven
But, alas for the ”hateful old age” perer
On the 1st August, 1797, Cecilia Roggendorff, the daughter of the Count Roggendorff [printed Roquendorf] whom Casanova had met at Vienna in 1753, wrote: ”You tell me in one of your letters that, at your death, you will leave me, by your will, your Memoirs which occupy twelve volu, or had completed his revision of, the twelve volumes In July 1792, as mentioned above, Casanova wrote Opiz that he had arrived at the twelfth volume In the Memoirs thee of seventy-two years, i a revision in 1797
At the beginning of one of the two chapters of the last volu until discovered by Arthur Symons at Dux in 1899, we read: ”When I left Venice in the year 1783, God ought to have sent me to Roe, according to all appearances, ht, led ht see my brother Francois, who had run into debt and as just then going to the Teeneration, but I arateful to me, I should have felt myself paid; it seems to me much better that he should carry the burden of his debt on his shoulders, which froht to find heavy
He does not deserve a worse punishment To-day, in the seventy-third year of my life, my only desire is to live in peace and to be far frohts over my moral liberty, for it is impossible that any kind of tyranny should not coincide with this iination”
Early in February, 1798, Casanova was taken sick with a very grave bladder trouble of which he died after suffering for three-and-a-half reatest sorrow the blohich has afflicted you” On the 31st March, after having consulted with a Prussian doctor, Zaguri sent a box of medicines and he wrote frequently until the end
On the 20th April Elisa von der Recke, whom Casanova had ne at Teplitz, having returned to Teplitz, wrote: ”Your letter, h o out will find me at your side” On the 27th, Elisa, still bedridden, wrote that the Count de Montboisier and his ere looking forward to visiting Casanova On the 6th May she wrote, regretting that she was unable to send soh for the peasants to secure the crawfish ”The Montboisier family, Milady Clark, my children and myself have all made vows for your recovery” On the 8th, she sent bouillon and madeira
On the 4th June, 1798, Casanova died His nephew, Carlo Angiolini ith him at the time He was buried in the churchyard of Santa Barbara at Dux The exact location of his grave is uncertain, but a tablet, placed against the outside wall of the church reads:
JAKOB CASANOVA Venedig 1725 Dux 1798