United States or Andorra ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Born in Venice in 1725, died probably in 1803; his father an actor, his mother a shoemaker's daughter; educated for the priesthood; expelled in disgrace from the seminary; entered the Venetian military service, and began a career of intrigue and adventure as chronicled in his memoirs; wandered to almost every quarter of Europe, living by his wits as journalist, doctor, mesmerist, and diplomat; effected an entrance to many high social circles and was presented to Catharine of Russia, Louis XV, Frederick the Great, Rousseau, Voltaire, and Madame de Pompadour; arrested in Venice as a spy in 1755, imprisoned and escaped; afterward honored by Italian princes and decorated by the Pope; became librarian to Count Waldstein in Bohemia in his fifty-seventh year; his "Memoirs" notable as a picture of manners and morals at their worst, chronicled with the utmost frankness.
Like Count Waldstein, however, the Prince de Ligne made the widest allowances, understanding the chafing of Casanova's restless spirit. "Casanova has a mind without an equal, from which each word is extraordinary and each thought a book." On the 16th December, he wrote Casanova: "One is never old with your heart, your genius and your stomach."
On the 13th March 1784, Count Lamberg wrote Casanova: "I know M. le C. de Waldstein through having heard him praised by judges worthy of appreciating the transcendent qualities of more than one kind peculiar to the Count. I congratulate you on having such a Maecenas, and I congratulate him in his turn on having chosen such a man as yourself."
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 then staying.
All the honor and nobility of the family seems to have centered in him. On his arrival in Vienna he carried letters of introduction from Count Waldstein and from the Elector, which opened to him the doors of the best houses. His intrinsic worth did the rest.
All afternoon he had been practising with fury; first scales, then exercises. Then a pause; and now, his fingers slipped into the first movement of the Waldstein Sonata. Secretly, mysteriously he began; then broke, sharply, impatiently, crescendo, as the passion of the music mounted up and up. And now as it settled into its rhythm his hands ran smoothly and joyously along.
This meeting with Count Waldstein and his ancestor's portrait brought me back to my poet's world, and I almost forgot that the following day I could be in the middle of Italy. In beautiful mild weather I went with the steam-boat to Ancona. It was a quiet starlight night, too beautiful to be spent in sleep.
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.
If that be not the case I count on the indulgence of my readers, who should remember that I have only written my story to prevent my going mad in the midst of all the petty insults and disagreeables which I have to bear day by day from the envious rascals who live with me in this castle of Count Waldstein, or Wallenstein, at Dux.
How things find voice in music! I recollect in the climax of the fight at Elandslaagte, when the uproar of various sounds was simply terrific, from the shrill treble of the whimpering bullets to the trumpet-like whoop of the shells as they arched overhead, to alight with a drum-boom and burst with a cymbal crash; the whole orchestra of battle was playing it seemed that everyone must recognise the air "The Ride of the Valkyrie;" and now the driving rain and the salt spindrift, the flapping of the leech of our brown sail, every note of accompaniment is being given to that great air that runs through Beethoven's Waldstein Sonata, which the wind is singing louder and louder.
Word Of The Day