It is interesting to know that, at this time, Casanova met his famous contemporary, Benjamin Franklin.  “A few days after the death of the illustrious d’Alembert,” Casanova assisted, at the old Louvre, in a session of the Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres.  “Seated beside the learned Franklin, I was a little surprised to hear Condorcet ask him if he believed that one could give various directions to an air balloon.  This was the response:  ’The matter is still in its infancy, so we must wait.’  I was surprised.  It is not believable that the great philosopher could ignore the fact that it would be impossible to give the machine any other direction than that governed by the air which fills it, but these people ’nil tam verentur, quam ne dubitare aliqua de re videantur.”

On the 13th November, Casanova left Paris in company with his brother, Francesco, whose wife did not accompany him.  “His new wife drove him away from Paris.”

“Now [1797 or 1798] I feel that I have seen Paris and France for the last time.  That popular effervescence [the French Revolution] has disgusted me and I am too old to hope to see the end of it.”

III

Vienna

On the 29th November, Casanova wrote from Frankfort that a drunken postilion had upset him and in the fall he had dislocated his left shoulder, but that a good bone-setter had restored it to place.  On the 1st December he wrote that he was healed, having taken medicine and having been blooded.  He promised to send Francesca eight sequins to pay her rent.  He reached Vienna about the 7th of December and on the 15th sent Francesco a bill of exchange for eight sequins and two lires.

On the last day of 1783, Francesca wrote to him at Vienna: 

“I see by your good letter that you will go to Dresden and then to Berlin and that you will return to Vienna the 10th January . . . .  I am astonished, my dear friend, at the great journeys you make in this cold weather, but, still, you are a great man, big-hearted, full of spirit and courage; you travel in this terrible cold as though it were nothing . . . . "

On the 9th January, Casanova wrote from Dessau to his brother Giovanni, proposing to make peace with him, but without results.  On the 27th, he was at Prague.  By the 16th February, he was again in Vienna, after a trip lasting sixty-two days.  His health was perfect, and he had gained flesh due, as he wrote Francesca, to his contented mind which was no longer tormented.

In February, he entered the service of M. Foscarini, Venetian Ambassador, “to write dispatches.”

On the 10th March, Francesca wrote: