Old Age and Death | Page 4

CASANOVA
APPENDIX AND SUPPLEMENT
Whether the author died before the work was complete, whether the
concluding volumes were destroyed by himself or his literary executors,
or whether the MS. fell into bad hands, seems a matter of uncertainty,
and the materials available towards a continuation of the Memoirs are

extremely fragmentary. We know, however, that Casanova at last
succeeded in obtaining his pardon from the authorities of the Republic,
and he returned to Venice, where he exercised the honourable office of
secret agent of the State Inquisitors--in plain language, he became a spy.
It seems that the Knight of the Golden Spur made a rather indifferent
"agent;" not surely, as a French writer suggests, because the dirty work
was too dirty for his fingers, but probably because he was getting old
and stupid and out-of-date, and failed to keep in touch with new forms
of turpitude. He left Venice again and paid a visit to Vienna, saw
beloved Paris once more, and there met Count Wallenstein, or
Waldstein. The conversation turned on magic and the occult sciences,
in, which Casanova was an adept, as the reader of the Memoirs will
remember, and the count took a fancy to the charlatan. In short
Casanova became librarian at the count's Castle of Dux, near Teplitz,
and there he spent the fourteen remaining years of his life.
As the Prince de Ligne (from whose Memoirs we learn these particulars)
remarks, Casanova's life had been a stormy and adventurous one, and it
might have been expected that he would have found his patron's library
a pleasant refuge after so many toils and travels. But the man carried
rough weather and storm in his own heart, and found daily
opportunities of mortification and resentment. The coffee was ill made,
the maccaroni not cooked in the true Italian style, the dogs had bayed
during the night, he had been made to dine at a small table, the parish
priest had tried to convert him, the soup had been served too hot on
purpose to annoy him, he had not been introduced to a distinguished
guest, the count had lent a book without telling him, a groom had not
taken off his hat; such were his complaints. The fact is Casanova felt
his dependent position and his utter poverty, and was all the more
determined to stand to his dignity as a man who had talked with all the
crowned heads of Europe, and had fought a duel with the Polish general.
And he had another reason for finding life bitter--he had lived beyond
his time. Louis XV. was dead, and Louis XVI. had been guillotined; the
Revolution had come; and Casanova, his dress, and his manners,
appeared as odd and antique as some "blood of the Regency" would
appear to us of these days. Sixty years before, Marcel, the famous
dancing-master, had taught young Casanova how to enter a room with a
lowly and ceremonious bow; and still, though the eighteenth century is

drawning to a close, old Casanova enters the rooms of Dux with the
same stately bow, but now everyone laughs. Old Casanova treads the
grave measures of the minuet; they applauded his dancing once, but
now everyone laughs. Young Casanova was always dressed in the
height of the fashion; but the age of powder, wigs, velvets, and silks
has departed, and old Casanova's attempts at elegance ("Strass"
diamonds have replaced the genuine stones with him) are likewise
greeted with laughter. No wonder the old adventurer denounces the
whole house of Jacobins and canaille; the world, he feels, is
permanently out of joint for him; everything is cross, and everyone is in
a conspiracy to drive the iron into his soul.
At last these persecutions, real or imaginary, drive him away from Dux;
he considers his genius bids him go, and, as before, he obeys. Casanova
has but little pleasure or profit out of this his last journey; he has to
dance attendance in ante-chambers; no one will give him any office,
whether as tutor, librarian, or chamberlain. In one quarter only is he
well received--namely, by the famous Duke of Weimar; but in a few
days he becomes madly jealous of the duke's more famous protegees,
Goethe and Wieland, and goes off declaiming against them and
German literature generally--with which literature he was wholly
unacquainted. From Weimar to Berlin; where there are Jews to whom
he has introductions. Casanova thinks them ignorant, superstitious, and
knavish; but they lend him money, and he gives bills on Count
Wallenstein, which are paid. In six weeks the wanderer returns to Dux,
and is welcomed with open arms; his journeys are over at last.
But not his troubles. A week after his return there are strawberries at
dessert; everyone is served before himself, and when the plate comes
round