“I received your last letter of the 20th August from Spa with another letter for S. E. the Procurator Morosini.  You directed me to take it to him myself, and on Sunday the last day of August, I did not fail to go there exactly at three o’clock.  At once on my arrival, I spoke to a servant who admitted me without delay; but, my dear friend, I regret having to send you an unpleasant message.  As soon as I handed him the letter, and before he even opened 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.”