“Determined to make sure of the punishment of your infamous valet, and wishing at the same time to give proof of my respect for Count Waldstein, not forgetting that, as a last resort, I have the right to invade his jurisdiction, I took an advocate, wrote my complaint and had it translated into German . . . .  Having heard of this at Teplitz, and having known that I would not save your name, you came to my chamber to beg me to write whatever I wished but not to name you because it would place you wrong before the War Council and expose you to the loss of your pension . . . .  I have torn up my first complaint and have written a second in Latin, which an advocate of Bilin has translated for me and which I have deposited at the office of the judiciary at Dux....”

Following this matter, Casanova attended the Carnival at Oberleutensdorf, and left at Dux a manuscript headed ’Passe temps de Jacques Casanova de Seingalt pour le carnaval de l’an 1792 dans le bourg d’Oberleutensdorf’.  While in that city, meditating on the Faulkircher incident, he wrote also ‘Les quinze pardons, monologue nocturne du bibliothecaire’, also preserved in manuscript at Dux, in which we read: 

“Gerron, having served twenty years as a simple soldier, acquired a great knowledge of military discipline.  This man was not yet seventy years old.  He had come to believe, partly from practice, partly from theory, that twenty blows with a baton on the rump are not dishonoring.  When the honest soldier was unfortunate enough to deserve them, he accepted them with resignation.  The pain was sharp, but not lasting; it did not deprive him of either appetite nor honor . . . .  Gerron, becoming a corporal, had obtained no idea of any kind of sorrow other than that coming from the blows of a baton on the rump . . . .  On this idea, he thought that the soul of an honest man was no different than a soldier’s breech.  If Gerron caused trouble to the spirit of a man of honor, he thought that this spirit, like his own, had only a rump, and that any trouble he caused would pass likewise.  He deceived himself.  The breech of the spirit of an honest man is different than the breech of the spirit of a Gerron who rendered compatible the rank of a military officer with the vile employments of a domestic and the stable-master of some particular lord.  Since Gerron deceived himself, we must pardon him all his faults . . .” etc.

Casanova complained of the Faulkircher incident to the mother of Count Waldstein, who wrote:  “I pity you, Monsieur, for being obliged to live among such people and in such evil company, but my son will not forget that which he owes to himself and I am sure he will give you all the satisfaction you wish.”  Also to his friend Zaguri, who wrote, the 16th March:  “I hope that the gout in your hand will not torment you any more. . . .  You have told me the story I asked about and which begins:  ’Two months have passed since an officer, who is at Vienna, insulted