was at first unable to identify the writer of a whole series of letters
in French, very affectionate and intimate letters, usually unsigned,
occasionally signed 'B.' She calls herself votre petite amie; or she ends
with a half-smiling, half-reproachful 'goodnight, and sleep better than
I' In one letter, sent from Paris in 1759, she writes: 'Never believe me,
but when I tell you that I love you, and that I shall love you always: In
another letter, ill-spelt, as her letters often are, she writes: 'Be
assured that evil tongues, vapours, calumny, nothing can change my heart,
which is yours entirely, and has no will to change its master.' Now, it
seems to me that these letters must be from Manon Baletti, and that they
are the letters referred to in the sixth volume of the Memoirs. We read
there (page 60) how on Christmas Day, 1759, Casanova receives a letter
from Manon in Paris, announcing her marriage with 'M. Blondel, architect
to the King, and member of his Academy'; she returns him his letters, and
begs him to return hers, or burn them. Instead of doing so he allows
Esther to read them, intending to burn them afterwards. Esther begs to be
allowed to keep the letters, promising to 'preserve them religiously all
her life.' 'These letters,' he says, 'numbered more than two hundred, and
the shortest were of four pages: Certainly there are not two hundred of
them at Dux, but it seems to me highly probable that Casanova made a
final selection from Manon's letters, and that it is these which I have
found.

But, however this may be, I was fortunate enough to find the set of
letters which I was most anxious to find the letters from Henriette,
whose loss every writer on Casanova has lamented. Henriette, it will be
remembered, makes her first appearance at Cesena, in the year 1748; after
their meeting at Geneva, she reappears, romantically 'a propos',
twenty-two years later, at Aix in Provence; and she writes to Casanova
proposing 'un commerce epistolaire', asking him what he has done since