“You say that you have read my letters to your brother and that he salutes me.  Make him my best compliments and thank him.  You ask me to advise you whether, if he should happen to return to Venice with you, he could lodge with you in your house.  Tell him yes, because the chickens are always in the loft and make no dirt; and, as for the dogs, one watches to see that they do not make dirt.  The furniture of the apartment is already in place; it lacks only a wardrobe and the little bed which you bought for your nephew and the mirror; as for the rest, everything is as you left it. . . .”

It is possible that, at the “grand dinner,” Casanova was presented to Count Waldstein, without whose kindness to Casanova the Memoirs probably would never have been written.  The Lord of Dux, Joseph Charles Emmanuel Waldstein-Wartenberg, Chamberlain to Her Imperial Majesty, descendant of the great Wallenstein, was the elder of the eleven children of Emmanuel Philibert, Count Waldstein, and Maria Theresa, Princess Liechtenstein.  Very egotistic and willful in his youth, careless of his affairs, and an imprudent gambler, at thirty years of age he had not yet settled down.  His mother was disconsolated that her son could not separate himself from occupations “so little suited to his spirit and his birth:” 

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.”  Which last remark certainly foreshadows the library at Dux.

Later, on the lath March, 1785, Zaguri wrote:  “In two months at the latest, all will be settled.  I am very happy.”  Referring further, it is conjectured, to Casanova’s hopes of placing himself with the Count.

IV

Letters from Francesca

20th March 1784.  “I see that you will print one of your books; you say that you will send me two hundred copies which I can sell at thirty sous each; that you will tell Zaguri and that he will advise those who wish copies to apply to me . . .”

This book was the Lettre historico-critique sur un fait connu dependant d’une cause peu connue, adressee au duc de * * *, 1784.

3rd April 1784.  “I see with pleasure that you have gone to amuse yourself in company with two ladies and that you have traveled five posts to see the Emperor [Joseph II] . . . .  You say that your fortune consists of one sequin . . . .  I hope that you obtained permission to print your book, that you will send me the two hundred copies, and that I may be able to sell them. . . .”

14th April 1784.  “You say that a man without money is the image of death, that he is a very wretched animal.  I learn with regret that I am unlikely to see you at the approaching Festival of the Ascension . . . that you hope to see me once more before dying . . . .  You make me laugh, telling me that at Vienna a balloon was made which arose in the air with six persons and that it might be that you would go up also.”