me!’ I cannot understand whether he who wrote you an insulting letter is at Vienna or whether he is at Dux.  When will the Count return? . . .  You should await his return because you would have, among other reasons to present to him, that of not wishing to have recourse to other jurisdiction than his. . .  You say your letters have been intercepted?  Someone has put your portrait in the privy?  The devil!  It is a miracle that you have not killed someone.  Positively, I am curious to know the results and I hope that you make no mistakes in this affair which appears to me very delicate.”

In August 1792, or thereabouts, Da Ponte on his way to Dresden, visited Casanova at Dux, in the hope of collecting an old debt, but gave up this hope on realizing Casanova’s limited resources.  In the winter of 1792-3 Da Ponte found himself in great distress in Holland.  “Casanova was the only man to whom I could apply,” he writes in his Memoirs.  “To better dispose him, I thought to write him in verse, depicting my troubles and begging him to send me some money on account of that which he still owed me.  Far from considering my request, he contented himself with replying, in vulgar prose, by a laconic billet which I transcribe:  ’When Cicero wrote to his friends, he avoided telling them of his affairs.’”

In May 1793, Da Ponte wrote from London:  “Count Waldstein has lived a very obscure life in London, badly lodged, badly dressed, badly served, always in cabarets, cafes, with porters, with rascals, with . . . we will leave out the rest.  He has the heart of an angel and an excellent character, but not so good a head as ours.”

Toward the end of 1792, Cssanova wrote a letter to Robespierre, which, as he advises M. Opiz, the 13th January 1793, occupied one hundred and twenty folio pages.  This letter was not to be found at Dux and it may possibly have been sent, or may have been destroyed by Casanova on the advice of Abbe O’Kelly.  Casanova’s feelings were very bitter over the trial of Louis XVI., and in his letters to M. Opiz he complained bitterly of the Jacobins and predicted the ruin of France.  Certainly, to Casanova, the French Revolution represented the complete overthrow of many of his cherished illusions.

On the 1st August 1793, Wilhelmina Rietz, Countess Lichtenau (called the Pompadour of Frederic-William II., King of Prussia) wrote to the librarian at Dux: 

“Monsieur

“It seems impossible to know where Count Valstaine [Waldstein] is staying, whether he is in Europe, Africa, America, or possibly the Megamiques.  If he is there, you are the only one who could insure his receiving the enclosed letter.

“For my part, I have not yet had time to read their history, but the first reading I do will assuredly be that.

“Mademoiselle Chappuis has the honor of recalling herself to your memory, and I have that of being your very humble servant,

“Wilhelmina Rietz.”