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After putting on my shirt and dressing-gown, I went out and found my new companion engaged in writing a list of what he wanted the gaoler to get him. As soon as he saw me, he exclaimed, "Ah! it's Casanova." I, too, recognised him as the Abbe and Count Fenarolo, a man of fifty, amiable, rich, and a favourite in society.
Thus began a regular and very full correspondence between the prisoners, and soon Casanova who had not lived on his wits for nothing was able to form a shrewd estimate of Balbi's character. The monk's letters revealed it as compounded of sensuality, stupidity, ingratitude, and indiscretion. "In the world," says Casanova, "I should have had no commerce with a fellow of his nature.
Probably, those who looked into this case looked no further. 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.
But although she lacked acquaintance with the notable personalities of the age; although she was without inside knowledge of courtly and diplomatic intrigues; although, therefore, she had to renounce any attempt to answer Casanova in detail, even when she felt there was good reason to distrust the accuracy of his assertions nevertheless, it was clear to him from the tenor of her remarks, that she had little respect for the princes of the earth or for the institutions of state; and she made no secret of her conviction that, alike in small things and in great, the world was not so much a world ruled by selfishness and lust for power, as a world in a condition of hopeless confusion.
Casanova threatened to have him hanged, but according to Da Ponte, was dissuaded from this by counter accusations made by Costa.
Come and see me to-morrow with the duke." The duke came in at that moment, and asked me if I had liked the opera. Leonilda answered for me, "We have been talking about love all the time, so we don't know what has been going on the stage." "You have done well." "I trust you will bring M. Casanova to see me tomorrow morning, as I hope he will bring me news that he has won."
She could not recall the journey thither, but could only remember having seen an old man wrapped in a scarlet cloak, disembarking from a long black boat. He had stumbled and had fallen prone. "Have you never been to Venice either?" asked Casanova of Marcolina, who was seated facing him, so that she could see over his shoulder into the deep gloom of the garden. She shook her head.
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.
On the night of the 18th or 19th September 1783, Casanova arrived at Paris. On the 30th he wrote Francesca that he had been well received by his sister-in-law and by his brother, Francesco Casanova, the painter. Nearly all his friends had departed for the other world, and he would now have to make new ones, which would be difficult as he was no longer pleasing to the women.
"In 1785, I found this runagate at Vienna. He was then Count Erdich's man, and when we come to that period, the reader shall hear what I did." Casanova did not reach this period, in writing his Memoirs, but an account of this meeting is given by Da Ponte, who was present at it, in his Memoirs. Costa had met with many misfortunes, as he told Casanova, and had himself been defrauded.
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