VI

Summary of my life

The 2nd November, 1797, Cecilia Roggendorff wrote to Casanova:  “By the way, how do you call yourself, by your baptismal name?  On what day and in what year were you born?  You may laugh, if you wish, at my questions, but I command you to satisfy me . . .”  To this request, Casanova responded with: 

“Summary of My Life:—­my mother brought me into the world at Venice on the 2nd April, Easter day of the year 1725.  She had, the night before, a strong desire for crawfish.  I am very fond of them.

“At baptism, I was named Jacques-Jerome.  I was an idiot until I was eight-and-a-half years old.  After having had a hemorrhage for three months, I was taken to Padua, where, cured of my imbecility, I applied myself to study and, at the age of sixteen years I was made a doctor and given the habit of a priest so that I might go seek my fortune at Rome.

“At Rome, the daughter of my French instructor was the cause of my being dismissed by my patron, Cardinal Aquaviva.

“At the age of eighteen years, I entered the military service of my country, and I went to Constantinople.  Two years afterward, having returned to Venice, I left the profession of honor and, taking the bit in my teeth, embraced the wretched profession of a violinist.  I horrified my friends, but this did not last for very long.

“At the age of twenty-one years, one of the highest nobles of Venice adopted me as his son, and, having become rich, I went to see Italy, France, Germany and Vienna where I knew Count Roggendorff.  I returned to Venice, where, two years later, the State Inquisitors of Venice, for just and wise reasons, imprisoned me under The Leads.

“This was the state prison, from which no one had ever escaped, but, with the aid of God, I took flight at the end of fifteen months and went to Paris.  In two years, my affairs prospered so well that I became worth a million, but, all the same, I went bankrupt.  I made money in Holland; suffered misfortune in Stuttgart; was received with honors in Switzerland; visited M. de Voltaire; adventured in Genoa, Marseilles, Florence and in Rome where the Pope Rezzonico, a Venetian, made me a Chevalier of Saint-Jean-Latran and an apostolic protonotary.  This was in the year 1760.

“In the same year I found good fortune at Naples; at Florence I carried off a girl; and, the following year, I was to attend the Congress at Augsburg, charged with a commission from the King of Portugal.  The Congress did not meet there and, after the publication of peace, I passed on into England, which great misfortunes caused me to leave in the following year, 1764.  I avoided the gibbet which, however, should not have dishonored me as I should only have been hung.  In the same year I searched in vain for fortune at Berlin and at Petersburg, but I found it at Warsaw in the following year.  Nine months afterwards, I lost it through being embroiled in a pistol duel with General Branicki; I pierced his abdomen but in eight months he was well again and I was very much pleased.  He was a brave man.  Obliged to leave Poland, I returned to Paris in 1767, but a ‘lettre de cachet’ obliged me to leave and I went to Spain where I met with great misfortunes.  I committed the crime of making nocturnal visits to the mistress of the ‘vice-roi’, who was a great scoundrel.