The complete memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt E-Book

Giacomo Casanova

• Herausgeber: Giacomo Casanova
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

Casanova was an Italian adventurer and author from the Republic of Venice. His autobiography, is regarded as one of the most authentic sources of the customs and norms of European social life during the 18th century. He has become so famous for his often complicated and elaborate affairs with women that his name is now synonymous with "womanizer". He associated with European royalty, popes and cardinals, along with luminaries such as Voltaire, Goethe and Mozart. He spent his last years in Bohemia as a librarian in Count Waldstein's household, where he also wrote the story of his life.

Leseprobe

The complete memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

Giacomo Casanova

First digital edition 2017 by Anna Ruggieri

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An Unpublished Chapter of History, by Arthur Symons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, hasrealised 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 inimitation 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. atRome, 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 asafe 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, dela 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 ofCasanova. 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 intheir 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 timesincorrect, and often somewhat Italian, French according to his own notions of elegant writing, suppressing passages which seemed too free-spoken from the point of viewof 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 atLeipzig, 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 copiedout 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 eventsaccepted as possible, by many good scholars who have never taken thetrouble 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 toodangerous 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 thenstaying. 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 thegreat gateway of the castle, leaving but just room for us to drive through their midst. I had thesensation 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 Bohemianfashion, 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 heled 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 ofthe 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 foolscappaper, 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 seegradually 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 werealso 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 andmathematical 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 Ilike 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 ‘tranquillisefor 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 whois 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 thesemanuscripts, 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 whichwe 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 nameof 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 argumentmore 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 pleaseher 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.

Occasionallyhe 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, andasked 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 Universitiesand all the Academies of Europe.’ [See Charles Henry, Les Connaissances Mathimatiques de Casanova. Rome, 1883.] There are innumerable verses, French andItalian, 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 Philosopheet 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’Histoirede 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 volumeof the Memoirs. In this manuscript we find Armeliine 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 ofthe 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 caselooked 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)intheir 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 referenceto 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. Weread 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 memberof 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 beremembered, 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.’ Casanovawas 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 viewof 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 whomthere 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 of1767, 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 ofCasanova’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 atDux, 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 inwhich 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 livinga 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. Passionhas 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 extendedindefinitely. 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 adventureswith 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

Aseries of adventures wilder and more fantastic than the wildestof romances, written down with the exactitude of a business diary;a view of men and cities from Naples to Berlin, from Madrid andLondon to Constantinople and St. Petersburg; the ‘vieintime’ of the eighteenth century depicted by a man, whoto-day sat with cardinals and saluted crowned heads, and to morrowlurked in dens of profligacy and crime; a book of confessionspenned without reticence and without penitence; a record of fortyyears of “occult” charlatanism; a collection of talesof successful imposture, of ‘bonnes fortunes’, ofmarvellous escapes, of transcendent audacity, told with the humourof Smollett and thedelicate wit of Voltaire. Who is thereinterested in men and letters, and in the life of the past, whowould not cry, “Where can such a book as this befound?”

Yet the above catalogue is but a brief outline, a bare andmeagre summary, of the book known as“THE MEMOIRS OFCASANOVA”; a work absolutely unique in literature. He whoopens these wonderful pages is as one who sits in a theatre andlooks across the gloom, not on a stage-play, but on another and avanished world. The curtain draws up, and suddenly ahundred andfifty years are rolled away, and in bright light stands out beforeus the whole life of the past; the gay dresses, the polished wit,the careless morals, and all the revel and dancing of those merryyears before the mighty deluge of the Revolution. The palaces andmarble stairs of old Venice are no longer desolate, but throngedwith scarlet-robed senators, prisoners with the doom of the Tenupon their heads cross the Bridge of Sighs, at dead of night thenun slips out of the convent gate to thedark canal where a gondolais waiting, we assist at the ‘parties fines’ ofcardinals, and we see the bank made at faro. Venice gives place tothe assembly rooms of Mrs. Cornely and the fast taverns of theLondon of 1760; we pass from Versailles to the Winter Palace of St.Petersburg in the days of Catherine, from the policy of the GreatFrederick to the lewd mirth of strolling-players, and the presence-chamber of the Vatican is succeeded by an intrigue in a garret. Itis indeed a new experience to read this history of a man who,refraining from nothing, has concealed nothing; of one who stood inthe courts of Louis the Magnificent before Madame de Pompadour andthe nobles of the Ancien Regime, and had an affair with anadventuress of Denmark Street, Soho;who was bound over to keep thepeace by Fielding, and knew Cagliostro. The friend of popes andkings and noblemen, and of all the male and female ruffians andvagabonds of Europe, abbe, soldier, charlatan, gamester, financier,diplomatist, viveur, philosopher,virtuoso, “chemist, fiddler,and buffoon,” each of these, and all of these was GiacomoCasanova, Chevalier de Seingalt, Knight of the Golden Spur.

And not only are the Memoirs a literary curiosity; they arealmost equally curious from a bibliographical point of view. Themanuscript was written in French and came into the possession ofthe publisher Brockhaus, of Leipzig, who had it translated intoGerman, and printed. From this German edition, M. Aubert de Vitryre-translated the work into French, butomitted about a fourth ofthe matter, and this mutilated and worthless version is frequentlypurchased by unwary bibliophiles. In the year 1826, however,Brockhaus, in order presumably to protect his property, printed theentire text of the original MS. inFrench, for the first time, andin this complete form, containing a large number of anecdotes andincidents not to be found in the spurious version, the work was notacceptable to the authorities, and was consequently rigorouslysuppressed. Only a few copies sent out for presentation or forreview are known to have escaped, and from one of these rare copiesthe present translation has been made and soley for privatecirculation.

In conclusion, both translator and ‘editeur’ havedone their utmost to presentthe English Casanova in a dress worthyof the wonderful and witty original.

https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/c/casanova/c33m/preface1.html

Last updated Sunday, March 27, 2016at 11:52

Author’s Preface

Iwill begin with this confession: whatever I have done in thecourse of my life, whether it be good or evil, has been donefreely; I am a free agent.

The doctrineof the Stoics or of any other sect as to the forceof Destiny is a bubble engendered by the imagination of man, and isnear akin to Atheism. I not only believe in one God, but my faithas a Christian is also grafted upon that tree of philosophy whichhas never spoiled anything.

I believe in the existence of an immaterial God, the Author andMaster of all beings and all things, and I feel that I never hadany doubt of His existence, from the fact that I have always reliedupon His providence, prayed to Himin my distress, and that He hasalways granted my prayers. Despair brings death, but prayer doesaway with despair; and when a man has prayed he feels himselfsupported by new confidence and endowed with power to act. As tothe means employed by the Sovereign Master of human beings to avertimpending dangers from those who beseech His assistance, I confessthat the knowledge of them is above the intelligence of man, whocan 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 thefavour we have been praying for, even when in appearance it seemsthe reverse. As to the position which our body ought to assume whenwe address ourselves to the Creator, a line of Petrarch settlesit:

‘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 depriveshimself of that power which Godhas given to him when He endowed himwith the gift of reason. Reason is a particle of theCreator’s divinity. When we use it with a spirit of humilityand justice we are certain to please the Giver of that preciousgift. God ceases to be God only for thosewho can admit thepossibility of His non-existence, and that conception is in itselfthe most severe punishment they can suffer.

Man is free; yet we must not suppose that he is at liberty to doeverything he pleases, for he becomes a slave the moment he allowshis actions to be ruled by passion. The man who has sufficientpower over himself to wait until his nature has recovered its evenbalance is the truly wise man, but such beings are seldom metwith.

The reader of these Memoirs will discover that I never had anyfixed aim before my eyes, and that my system, if it can be called asystem, has been to glide away unconcernedly on the stream of life,trusting to the wind wherever it led. How many changes arise fromsuch an independent mode of life! My success and my misfortunes,the bright and the dark days I have gone through, everything hasproved to me that in this world, either physical or moral, goodcomes out of evil just as well as evil comes out of good. My errorswill point to thinking men the various roads, and will teach themthe great art of treading on the brink of the precipice withoutfalling into it. It is only necessary to have courage, for strengthwithout self- confidence is useless. I have often met withhappiness after some imprudent stepwhich ought to have brought ruinupon me, and although passing a vote of censure upon myself I wouldthank God for his mercy. But, by way of compensation, diremisfortune has befallen me in consequence of actions prompted bythe most cautious wisdom. Thiswould humble me; yet conscious that Ihad acted rightly I would easily derive comfort from thatconviction.

In spite of a good foundation of sound morals, the naturaloffspring of the Divine principles which had been early rooted inmy heart, I have been throughout my life the victim of my senses; Ihave found delight in losing the right path, I have constantlylived in the midst of error, with no consolation but theconsciousness of my being mistaken. Therefore, dear reader, I trustthat, far from attaching to my history the character of impudentboasting, you will find in my Memoirs only the characteristicproper to a general confession, and that my narratory style will bethe manner neither of a repenting sinner, nor of a man ashamed toacknowledge his frolics. They are the follies inherent to youth; Imake sport of them, and, if you are kind, you will not yourselfrefuse them a good-natured smile. You will be amused when you seethat I have more than once deceived without the slightest qualm ofconscience, both knaves and fools. As to the deceit perpetratedupon women, let it pass, for, when love is in the way, men andwomen as a general rule dupe each other. But on the score of foolsit is a very different matter. I always feel the greatest blisswhen I recollect those I have caught in my snares, for theygenerally are insolent, and so self-conceited that they challengewit. We avenge intellect when we dupe a fool, and it is a victorynot to be despised for a fool is covered with steel and it is oftenveryhard to find his vulnerable part. In fact, to gull a fool seemsto me an exploit worthy of a witty man. I have felt in my veryblood, ever since I was born, a most unconquerable hatred towardsthe whole tribe of fools, and it arises from the fact that I feelmyself a blockhead whenever I am in their company. I am very farfrom placing them in the same class with those men whom we callstupid, for the latterare stupid only from deficient education, andI rather like them. I have met with some of them — veryhonest fellows, who, with all their stupidity, had a kind ofintelligence and an upright good sense, which cannot be thecharacteristics of fools. They are like eyes veiled with thecataract, which, if the disease could be removed, would be verybeautiful.

Dear reader, examine the spirit of this preface, and you will atonce guess at my purpose. I have written a preface because I wishyou to know me thoroughly before you begin the reading of myMemoirs. It is only in a coffee-room or at a table d’hotethat we like to converse with strangers.

I have written the history of my life, and I have a perfectright to do so; but am I wise in throwing it before a public ofwhich I know nothing but evil? No, I am aware it is sheer folly,but I want to be busy, I wantto laugh, and why should I deny myselfthis gratification?

‘Expulit elleboro morbum bilemque mero.’

An ancient author tells us somewhere, with the tone of apedagogue, if you have not done anything worthy of being recorded,at least write something worthyof being read. It is a precept asbeautiful as a diamond of the first water cut in England, but itcannot be applied to me, because I have not written either a novel,or the life of an illustrious character. Worthy or not, my life ismy subject, and my subject is my life. I have lived withoutdreaming that I should ever take a fancy to write the history of mylife, and, for that very reason, my Memoirs may claim from thereader an interest and a sympathy which they would not haveobtained, had I always entertained the design to write them in myold age, and, still more, to publish them.

I have reached, in 1797, the age of three-score years andtwelve; I can not say, Vixi, and I could not procure a moreagreeable pastime than to relate my own adventures, andto causepleasant laughter amongst the good company listening to me, fromwhich I have received so many tokens of friendship, and in themidst of which I have ever lived. To enable me to write well, Ihave only to think that my readers will belong to thatpolitesociety:

‘Quoecunque dixi, si placuerint, dictavitauditor.’

Should there be a few intruders whom I can not prevent fromperusing my Memoirs, I must find comfort in the idea that myhistory was not written for them.

By recollecting the pleasures Ihave had formerly, I renew them,I enjoy them a second time, while I laugh at the remembrance oftroubles now past, and which I no longer feel. A member of thisgreat universe, I speak to the air, and I fancy myselfrendering anaccount of my administration, as a steward is wont to do beforeleaving his situation. For my future I have no concern, and as atrue philosopher, I never would have any, for I know not what itmay be: as a Christian, on the other hand, faith must believewithout discussion, and thestronger it is, the more it keepssilent. I know that I have lived because I have felt, and, feelinggiving me the knowledge of my existence, I know likewise that Ishall exist no more when I shall have ceased to feel.

Should I perchance still feel aftermy death, I would no longerhave any doubt, but I would most certainly give the lie to anyoneasserting before me that I was dead.

The history of my life must begin by the earliest circumstancewhich my memory can evoke; it will therefore commence when I hadattained 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 couldonly lay claim to a state of vegetation. The mind of a human beingis formed only of comparisons made in order to examineanalogies,and therefore cannot precede the existence of memory. The mnemonicorgan was developed in my head only eight years and four monthsafter my birth; it is then that my soul began to be susceptible ofreceiving impressions. How is it possible for an immaterialsubstance, which can neither touch nor be touched to receiveimpressions? It is a mystery which man cannot unravel.

A certain philosophy, full of consolation, and in perfect accordwith religion, pretends that the state of dependence in whichthesoul stands in relation to the senses and to the organs, is onlyincidental and transient, and that it will reach a condition offreedom and happiness when the death of the body shall havedelivered it from that state of tyrannic subjection. This is veryfine, but, apart from religion, where is the proof of it all?Therefore, as I cannot, from my own information, have a perfectcertainty of my being immortal until the dissolution of my body hasactually taken place, people must kindly bear with me, if Iam in nohurry to obtain that certain knowledge, for, in my estimation, aknowledge to be gained at the cost of life is a rather expensivepiece of information. In the mean time I worship God, laying everywrong action under an interdict which I endeavourto respect, and Iloathe the wicked without doing them any injury. I only abstainfrom doing them any good, in the full belief that we ought not tocherish serpents.

As I must likewise say a few words respecting my nature and mytemperament, I premise that the most indulgent of my readers is notlikely to be the most dishonest or the least gifted withintelligence.

I have had in turn every temperament; phlegmatic in my infancy;sanguine in my youth; later on, bilious; and now I have adisposition which engenders melancholy, andmost likely will neverchange. I always made my food congenial to my constitution, and myhealth was always excellent. I learned very early that our healthis always impaired by some excess either of food or abstinence, andI never had any physician except myself. I am bound to add that theexcess in too little has ever proved in me more dangerous than theexcess in too much; the last may cause indigestion, but the firstcauses death.

Now, old as I am, and although enjoying good digestive organs, Imust have only one meal every day; but I find a set-off to thatprivation in my delightful sleep, and in the ease which Iexperience in writing down my thoughts without having recourse toparadox or sophism, which would be calculated to deceive myselfeven more than my readers, for I never could make up my mind topalm counterfeit coin upon them if I knew it to be such.

The sanguine temperament rendered me very sensible to theattractions of voluptuousness: I was always cheerful and ever readyto pass from one enjoyment to another, and I was at the same timevery skillful in inventing new pleasures. Thence, I suppose, mynatural disposition to make fresh acquaintances, and to break withthem so readily, although always for a good reason, and neverthrough mere fickleness. The errors caused by temperament are notto be corrected, because our temperament is perfectly independentof our strength: it is not the case with our character. Heart andhead are the constituent parts of character; temperament has almostnothing to do with it, and, therefore, character is dependent uponeducation, and is susceptible of being corrected and improved.

I leave to others the decision as to the good or evil tendenciesof my character, but such as it is it shines upon my countenance,and there it can easily be detected by any physiognomist. It isonly on the fact that character can be read; there it lies exposedto the view. It is worthy of remark that men who have no peculiarcast of countenance, and there are a great many such men, arelikewise totally deficient in peculiar characteristics, and we mayestablish the rule that the varieties in physiognomy are equal tothe differences in character. I am aware that throughout my life myactions have received their impulse more from the force of feelingthan from the wisdom of reason, and this has led me to acknowledgethat my conduct has been dependent upon my nature more than upon mymind; both are generally at war, and in the midst of theircontinual collisions I havenever found in me sufficient mind tobalance my nature, or enough strength in my nature to counteractthe power of my mind. But enough of this, for there is truth in theold saying: ‘Si brevis esse volo, obscurus fio’, and Ibelieve that,without offending against modesty, I can apply tomyself 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 mysenses; I never knew anything ofgreater importance. I felt myselfborn for the fair sex, I have ever loved it dearly, and I have beenloved by it as often and as much as I could. I have likewise alwayshad a great weakness for good living, and I ever felt passionatelyfond of every object which excited my curiosity.

I have had friends who have acted kindly towards me, and it hasbeen my good fortune to have it in my power to give themsubstantial proofs of my gratitude. I have had also bitter enemieswho have persecuted me, and whom I have not crushed simply becauseI could not do it. I never would have forgiven them, had I not lostthe memory of all the injuries they had heaped upon me. The man whoforgets does not forgive, he only loses the remembrance of the harminflicted on him; forgiveness is the offspring of a feeling ofheroism, of a noble heart, of a generous mind, whilst forgetfulnessis 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 courseof time, kills the unhappy wretch who delightsin nursing it in his bosom.

Should anyone bring against me an accusation of sensuality hewould be wrong, for all the fierceness of my senses never caused meto neglect any of my duties. For the same excellent reason, theaccusation of drunkenness ought not to have been brought againstHomer:

‘Laudibus arguitur vini vinosus Homerus.’

I have always been fond of highly-seasoned, rich dishes, such asmacaroni prepared by a skilful Neapolitan cook, the olla-podrida ofthe Spaniards, the glutinous codfish from Newfoundland, game with astrong flavour, and cheese the perfect state of which is attainedwhen the tiny animaculae formed from its very essence begin to shewsigns of life. As for women, I have always foundthe odour of mybeloved ones exceeding pleasant.

What depraved tastes! some people will exclaim. Are you notashamed to confess such inclinations without blushing! Dearcritics, you make me laugh heartily. Thanks to my coarse tastes, Ibelieve myselfhappier than other men, because I am convinced thatthey enhance my enjoyment. Happy are those who know how to obtainpleasureswithout injury to anyone; insane are those who fancy thatthe Almighty can enjoy the sufferings, the pains, the fasts andabstinences which they offer to Him as a sacrifice, and that Hislove is granted only to those who tax themselves so foolishly. Godcan only demand from His creatures the practice of virtues the seedof which He has sown in their soul, and all He has given untous hasbeen intended for our happiness; self-love, thirst for praise,emulation, strength, courage, and a power of which nothing candeprive us — the power of self-destruction, if, after duecalculation, whether false or just, we unfortunately reckon deathtobe advantageous. This is the strongest proof of our moral freedomso much attacked by sophists. Yet this power of self-destruction isrepugnant to nature, and has been rightly opposed by everyreligion.

A so-called free-thinker told me at one time thatI could notconsider myself a philosopher if I placed any faith in revelation.But when we accept it readily in physics, why should we reject itin religious matters? The form alone is the point in question. Thespirit speaks to the spirit, and not to theears. The principles ofeverything we are acquainted with must necessarily have beenrevealed to those from whom we have received them by the great,supreme principle, which contains them all. The bee erecting itshive, the swallow building its nest, theant constructing its cave,and the spider warping its web, would never have done anything butfor a previous and everlasting revelation. We must either believethat it is so, or admit that matter is endowed with thought. But aswe dare not pay such a compliment to matter, let us stand byrevelation.