The Complete Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt - Giacomo Casanova (best book club books of all time .txt) 📗

were you born? You may laugh, if you wish, at my questions, but I command you to satisfy me . . ." To this request, Casanova responded with:

"Summary of My Life:--my mother brought me into the world at Venice on the 2nd April, Easter day of the year 1725. She had, the night before, a strong desire for crawfish. I am very fond of them.

"At baptism, I was named Jacques-Jerome. I was an idiot until I was eight-and-a-half years old. After having had a hemorrhage for three months, I was taken to Padua, where, cured of my imbecility, I applied myself to study and, at the age of sixteen years I was made a doctor and given the habit of a priest so that I might go seek my fortune at Rome.

"At Rome, the daughter of my French instructor was the cause of my being dismissed by my patron, Cardinal Aquaviva.

"At the age of eighteen years, I entered the military service of my country, and I went to Constantinople. Two years afterward, having returned to Venice, I left the profession of honor and, taking the bit in my teeth, embraced the wretched profession of a violinist. I horrified my friends, but this did not last for very long.

"At the age of twenty-one years, one of the highest nobles of Venice adopted me as his son, and, having become rich, I went to see Italy, France, Germany and Vienna where I knew Count Roggendorff. I returned to Venice, where, two years later, the State Inquisitors of Venice, for just and wise reasons, imprisoned me under The Leads.

"This was the state prison, from which no one had ever escaped, but, with the aid of God, I took flight at the end of fifteen months and went to Paris. In two years, my affairs prospered so well that I became worth a million, but, all the same, I went bankrupt. I made money in Holland; suffered misfortune in Stuttgart; was received with honors in Switzerland; visited M. de Voltaire; adventured in Genoa, Marseilles, Florence and in Rome where the Pope Rezzonico, a Venetian, made me a Chevalier of Saint-Jean-Latran and an apostolic protonotary. This was in the year 1760.

"In the same year I found good fortune at Naples; at Florence I carried off a girl; and, the following year, I was to attend the Congress at Augsburg, charged with a commission from the King of Portugal. The Congress did not meet there and, after the publication of peace, I passed on into England, which great misfortunes caused me to leave in the following year, 1764. I avoided the gibbet which, however, should not have dishonored me as I should only have been hung. In the same year I searched in vain for fortune at Berlin and at Petersburg, but I found it at Warsaw in the following year. Nine months afterwards, I lost it through being embroiled in a pistol duel with General Branicki; I pierced his abdomen but in eight months he was well again and I was very much pleased. He was a brave man. Obliged to leave Poland, I returned to Paris in 1767, but a 'lettre de cachet' obliged me to leave and I went to Spain where I met with great misfortunes. I committed the crime of making nocturnal visits to the mistress of the 'vice-roi', who was a great scoundrel.

"At the frontiers of Spain, I escaped from assassins only to suffer, at Aix, in Provence, an illness which took me to the edge of the grave, after spitting blood for eighteen months.

"In the year 1769, I published my Defense of the Government of Venice, in three large volumes, written against Amelot de la Houssaie.

"In the following year the English Minister at the Court of Turin sent me, well recommended, to Leghorn. I wished to go to Constantinople with the Russian fleet, but as Admiral Orlof, would not meet my conditions, I retraced my steps and went to Rome under the pontificate of Ganganelli.

"A happy love affair made me leave Rome and go to Naples and, three months later, an unhappy love made me return to Rome. I had measured swords for the third time with Count Medini who died four years ago at London, in prison for his debts.

"Having considerable money, I went to Florence, where, during the Christmas Festival, the Archduke Leopold, the Emperor who died four or five years ago, ordered me to leave his dominions within three days. I had a mistress who, by my advice, became Marquise de * * * at Bologna.

"Weary of running about Europe, I determined to solicit mercy from the Venetian State Inquisitors. For this purpose, I established myself at Trieste where, two years later, I obtained it. This was the 14th September 1774. My return to Venice after nineteen years was the most pleasant moment of my life.

"In 1782, I became embroiled with the entire body of the Venetian nobility. At the beginning of 1783, I voluntarily left the ungrateful country and went to Vienna. Six months later I went to Paris with the intention of establishing myself there, but my brother, who had lived there for twenty-six years, made me forget my interests in favor of his. I rescued him from the hands of his wife and took him to Vienna where Prince Kaunitz engaged him to establish himself. He is still there, older than I am by two years.

"I placed myself in the service of M. Foscarini, Venetian Ambassador, to write dispatches. Two years later, he died in my arms, killed by the gout which mounted into his chest. I then set out for Berlin in the hope of securing a position with the Academy, but, half way there, Count Waldstein stopped me at Teplitz and led me to Dux where I still am and where, according to all appearances, I shall die.

"This is the only summary of my life that I have written, and I permit any use of it which may be desired.

"'Non erubesco evangelium'.

"This 17th November 1797.

"Jacques Casanova."

In reference to Casanova's ironic remark about his escape from England, see his conversation, on the subject of "dishonor," with Sir Augustus Hervey at London in 1763, which is given in the Memoirs.

VII LAST DAYS AT DUX

Scattered through the Memoirs are many of Casanova's thoughts about his old age. Some were possibly incorporated in the original text, others possibly added when he revised the text in 1797. These vary from resignation to bitterness, doubtless depending on Casanova's state of mind at the moment he wrote them:

"Now that I am seventy-two years old, I believe myself no longer susceptible of such follies. But alas! that is the very thing which causes me to be miserable."

"I hate old age which offers only what I already know, unless I should take up a gazette."

"Age has calmed my passions by rendering them powerless, but my heart has not grown old and my memory has kept all the freshness of youth."

"No, I have not forgotten her [Henriette]; for even now, when my head is covered with white hair, the recollection of her is still a source of happiness for my heart."

"A scene which, even now, excites my mirth."

"Age, that cruel and unavoidable disease, compels me to be in good 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 my hair and deadened the ardor of my senses, my imagination does not take such a high flight and I think differently."

"What embitters my old age is that, having a heart as warm as ever, I have no longer the strength necessary to secure a single day as blissful as those which I owed to this charming girl."

"When I recall these events, I grow young again and feel once more the delights of youth, despite the long years which separate me from that happy time."

"Now that I am getting into my dotage, 1 look on the dark side of everything. I am invited to a wedding and see naught but gloom; and, witnessing the coronation of Leopold II, at Prague, I say to myself, 'Nolo coronari'. Cursed old age, 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 makes death more hateful still."

And so on, through the Memoirs, Casanova supplies his own picture, knowing very well that the end, even of his cherished memories, is not far distant.

In 1797, Casanova relates an amusing, but irritating incident, which resulted in the loss of the first three chapters of the second volume of the Memoirs through the carelessness of a servant girl 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 must now abridge," of these chapters. Thirty years before, Casanova would doubtless have made love to the girl and all would have been forgiven. But, alas for the "hateful old age" permitting no relief except irritation and impotent anger.

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 volumes."

At this time, Casanova was revising, 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 themselves we read, ". . . the various adventures which, at the age of seventy-two years, impel me to write these Memoirs . . .," written probably during a revision in 1797.

At the beginning of one of the two chapters of the last volume, which were missing 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 Rome, or to Naples, or to Sicily, or to Parma, where my old age, according to all appearances, might have been happy. My genius, who is always right, led me to Paris, so that I might see my brother Francois, who had run into debt and who was just then going to the Temple. I do not care whether or not he owes me his regeneration, but I am glad to have effected it. If he had been grateful 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 from time to time he ought 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 from any person who might imagine that he has rights over my moral liberty, for it is impossible that any kind of tyranny should not coincide with this imagination."

Early in February, 1798, Casanova was taken sick with a very grave bladder