Whether the author died before the work was complete, whether the concluding volumes were destroyed by himself or his literary executors, or whether the MS. fell into bad hands, seems a matter of uncertainty¹, and the materials available towards a continuation of the Memoirs² are extremely fragmentary. We know, however, that Casanova at last succeeded in obtaining his pardon from the authorities of the Republic, and he returned to Venice, where he exercised the honourable³ office of secret agent of the State Inquisitors — in plain language, he became a spy. It seems that the Knight⁴ of the Golden Spur made a rather indifferent “agent;” not surely, as a French writer suggests, because the dirty work was too dirty for his fingers, but probably because he was getting old and stupid and out-of-date, and failed to keep in touch with new forms of turpitude⁵. He left Venice again and paid a visit to Vienna, saw beloved Paris once more, and there met Count Wallenstein, or Waldstein. The conversation turned on magic and the occult sciences, in, which Casanova was an adept⁶, as the reader of the Memoirs will remember, and the count took a fancy to the charlatan⁷. In short Casanova became librarian at the count’s Castle of Dux, near Teplitz, and there he spent the fourteen remaining years of his life.

As the Prince de Ligne (from whose Memoirs we learn these particulars) remarks, Casanova’s life had been a stormy and adventurous⁸ one, and it might have been expected that he would have found his patron’s library a pleasant refuge after so many toils⁹ and travels. But the man carried rough weather and storm in his own heart, and found daily opportunities of

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