The motto I have adopted justifies my digressions, and all the commentaries, perhaps too numerous, in which I indulge upon my various exploits:  ‘Nequidquam sapit qui sibi non sapit’.  For the same reason I have always felt a great desire to receive praise and applause from polite society: 

  ’Excitat auditor stadium, laudataque virtus
   Crescit, et immensum gloria calcar habet.

I would willingly have displayed here the proud axiom:  ’Nemo laeditur nisi a se ipso’, had I not feared to offend the immense number of persons who, whenever anything goes wrong with them, are wont to exclaim, “It is no fault of mine!” I cannot deprive them of that small particle of comfort, for, were it not for it, they would soon feel hatred for themselves, and self-hatred often leads to the fatal idea of self-destruction.

As for myself I always willingly acknowledge my own self as the principal cause of every good or of every evil which may befall me; therefore I have always found myself capable of being my own pupil, and ready to love my teacher.

The memoirs of
Jacques Casanova

CHAPTER I

My Family Pedigree—­My Childhood

Don Jacob Casanova, the illegitimate son of Don Francisco Casanova, was a native of Saragosa, the capital of Aragon, and in the year of 1428 he carried off Dona Anna Palofax from her convent, on the day after she had taken the veil.  He was secretary to King Alfonso.  He ran away with her to Rome, where, after one year of imprisonment, the pope, Martin iii., released Anna from her vows, and gave them the nuptial blessing at the instance of Don Juan Casanova, majordomo of the Vatican, and uncle of Don Jacob.  All the children born from that marriage died in their infancy, with the exception of Don Juan, who, in 1475, married Donna Eleonora Albini, by whom he had a son, Marco Antonio.

In 1481, Don Juan, having killed an officer of the king of Naples, was compelled to leave Rome, and escaped to Como with his wife and his son; but having left that city to seek his fortune, he died while traveling with Christopher Columbus in the year 1493.

Marco Antonio became a noted poet of the school of Martial, and was secretary to Cardinal Pompeo Colonna.

The satire against Giulio de Medicis, which we find in his works, having made it necessary for him to leave Rome, he returned to Como, where he married Abondia Rezzonica.  The same Giulio de Medicis, having become pope under the name of Clement VII, pardoned him and called him back to Rome with his wife.  The city having been taken and ransacked by the Imperialists in 1526, Marco Antonio died there from an attack of the plague; otherwise he would have died of misery, the soldiers of Charles V. having taken all he possessed.  Pierre Valerien speaks of him in his work ‘de infelicitate litteratorum’.