it, he said to me, ’I always know Casanova’s affairs which trouble me.’  After having read hardly more than a page, he said:  ‘I know not what to do!’ I told him that, on the 6th of this month, I was to write you at Paris and that, if he would do me the honor of giving me his reply, I would put it in my letter.  Imagine what answer he gave me!  I was much surprised!  He told me that I should wish you happiness but that he would not write to you again.  He said no more.  I kissed his hands and left.  He did not give me even a sou.  That is all he said to me . . . .

“S.  E. Pietro Zaguri sent to me to ask if I knew where you were, because he had written two letters to Spa and had received no reply . . . .”

II

Paris

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.

On the 14th October he wrote again, saying that he was in good health and that Paris was a paradise which made him feel twenty years old.  Four letters followed; in the first, dated from Paris on S. Martin’s Day, he told Francesco not to reply for he did not know whether he would prolong his visit nor where he might go.  Finding no fortune in Paris, he said he would go and search elsewhere.  On the 23rd, he sent one hundred and fifty lires; “a true blessing,” to the poor girl who was always short of money.

Between times, Casanova passed eight days at Fontainebleau, where he met “a charming young man of twenty-five,” the son of “the young and lovely O’Morphi” who indirectly owed to him her position, in 1752, as the mistress of Louis XV.  “I wrote my name on his tablets and begged him to present my compliments to his mother.”

He also met, in the same place, his own son by Mme. Dubois, his former housekeeper at Soleure who had married the good M. Lebel.  “We shall hear of the young gentleman in twenty-one years at Fontainebleau.”

“When I paid my third visit to Paris, with the intention of ending my days in that capital, I reckoned on the friendship of M. d’Alembert, but he died, like, Fontenelle, a fortnight after my arrival, toward the end of 1783.”

It is interesting to know that, at this time, Casanova met his famous contemporary, Benjamin Franklin.  “A few days after the death of the illustrious d’Alembert,” Casanova assisted, at the old Louvre, in a session of the Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres.  “Seated beside the learned Franklin, I was a little surprised to hear Condorcet ask him if he believed that one could give various directions to an air balloon.  This was the response:  ’The matter is still in its infancy, so we must wait.’  I was surprised.  It is not believable that the great philosopher could ignore the fact that it would be impossible to give the machine any other direction than that governed by the air which fills it, but these people ’nil tam verentur, quam ne dubitare aliqua de re videantur.”