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Memoirs of Casanova — Volume 01: Childhood by Giacomo Casanova
page 7 of 228 (03%)
forty-eight letters of Casanova to the Inquisitors of State, dating from
1763 to 1782, among the Riferte dei Confidenti, or reports of secret
agents; the earliest asking permission to return to Venice, the rest
giving information in regard to the immoralities of the city, after his
return there; all in the same handwriting as the Memoirs. Further proof
could scarcely be needed, but Baschet has done more than prove the
authenticity, he has proved the extraordinary veracity, of the Memoirs.
F. W. Barthold, in 'Die Geschichtlichen Personlichkeiten in J. Casanova's
Memoiren,' 2 vols., 1846, had already examined about a hundred of
Casanova's allusions to well known people, showing the perfect exactitude
of all but six or seven, and out of these six or seven inexactitudes
ascribing only a single one to the author's intention. Baschet and
d'Ancona both carry on what Barthold had begun; other investigators, in
France, Italy and Germany, have followed them; and two things are now
certain, first, that Casanova himself wrote the Memoirs published under
his name, though not textually in the precise form in which we have them;
and, second, that as their veracity becomes more and more evident as they
are confronted with more and more independent witnesses, it is only fair
to suppose that they are equally truthful where the facts are such as
could only have been known to Casanova himself.



II

For more than two-thirds of a century it has been known that Casanova
spent the last fourteen years of his life at Dux, that he wrote his
Memoirs there, and that he died there. During all this time people have
been discussing the authenticity and the truthfulness of the Memoirs,
they have been searching for information about Casanova in various
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