his escape from prison, and promising to do her best to tell him all that
has happened to her during the long interval. After quoting her letter,
he adds: 'I replied to her, accepting the correspondence that she offered
me, and telling her briefly all my vicissitudes. She related to me in
turn, in some forty letters, all the history of her life. If she dies
before me, I shall add these letters to these Memoirs; but to-day she is
still alive, and always happy, though now old.' It has never been known
what became of these letters, and why they were not added to the Memoirs.
I have found a great quantity of them, some signed with her married name
in full, 'Henriette de Schnetzmann,' and I am inclined to think that she
survived Casanova, for one of the letters is dated Bayreuth, 1798, the
year of Casanova's death. They are remarkably charming, written with a
mixture of piquancy and distinction; and I will quote the characteristic
beginning and end of the last letter I was able to find. It begins: 'No,
it is impossible to be sulky with you!' and ends: 'If I become vicious,
it is you, my Mentor, who make me so, and I cast my sins upon you. Even
if I were damned I should still be your most devoted friend, Henriette de
Schnetzmann.' Casanova was twenty-three when he met Henriette; now,
herself an old woman, she writes to him when he is seventy-three, as if
the fifty years that had passed were blotted out in the faithful
affection of her memory. How many more discreet and less changing lovers
have had the quality of constancy in change, to which this life-long
correspondence bears witness? Does it not suggest a view of Casanova not
quite the view of all the world? To me it shows the real man, who perhaps
of all others best understood what Shelley meant when he said:

True love in this differs from gold or clay
That to divide is not to take away.

But, though the letters from women naturally interested me the most, they