I went to the Minerva to find Donna Cecilia; she was no more in this world.  I found out where her daughter Angelica lived, and I went to see her, but she gave me a poor reception, and said that she really scarcely remembered me.

“I can say the same,” I replied, “for you are not the Angelica I used to know.  Good-bye, madam!”

The lapse of time had not improved her personal appearance.  I found out also where the printer’s son, who had married Barbaruccia, lived, but—­I put off the pleasure of seeing him till another time, and also my visit to the Reverend Father Georgi, who was a man of great repute in Rome.  Gaspar Vivaldi had gone into the country.

My brother took me to Madame Cherubini.  I found her mansion to be a splendid one, and the lady welcomed me in the Roman manner.  I thought her pleasant and her daughters still more so, but I thought the crowd of lovers too large and too miscellaneous.  There was too much luxury and ceremony, and the girls, one of whom was as fair as Love himself, were too polite to everybody.  An interesting question was put to me, to which I answered in such a manner as to elicit another question, but to no purpose.  I saw that the rank of my brother, who had introduced me, prevented my being thought a person of any consequence, and on hearing an abbe say, “He’s Casanova’s brother,” I turned to him and said,—­

“That’s not correct; you should say Casanova’s my brother.”

“That comes to the same thing.”

“Not at all, my dear abbe.”

I said these words in a tone which commanded attention, and another abbe said,—­

“The gentleman is quite right; it does not come to the same thing.”

The first abbe made no reply to this.  The one who had taken my part, and was my friend from that moment, was the famous Winckelmann, who was unhappily assassinated at Trieste twelve years afterwards.

While I was talking to him, Cardinal Alexander Albani arrived.  Winckelmann presented me to his eminence, who was nearly blind.  He talked to me a great deal, without saying anything worth listening to.  As soon as he heard that I was the Casanova who had escaped from The Leads, he said in a somewhat rude tone that he wondered I had the hardihood to come to Rome, where on the slightest hint from the State Inquisitors at Venice an ‘ordine sanctissimo’ would re-consign me to my prison.  I was annoyed by this unseemly remark, and replied in a dignified voice,—­

“It is not my hardihood in coming to Rome that your eminence should wonder at, but a man of any sense would wonder at the Inquisitors if they had the hardihood to issue an ‘ordine sanctissimo’ against me; for they would be perplexed to allege any crime in me as a pretext for thus infamously depriving me of my liberty.”

This reply silenced his eminence.  He was ashamed at having taken me for a fool, and to see that I thought him one.  Shortly after I left and never set foot in that house again.