telling the truth when he tells us about his adventures with women. But
the letters contained among these manuscripts shows us the women of
Casanova writing to him with all the fervour and all the fidelity which
he attributes to them; and they show him to us in the character of as
fervid and faithful a lover. In every fact, every detail, and in the
whole mental impression which they convey, these manuscripts bring before
us the Casanova of the Memoirs. As I seemed to come upon Casanova at
home, it was as if I came upon old friend, already perfectly known to me,
before I had made my pilgrimage to Dux.

1902




TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE

A series of adventures wilder and more fantastic than the wildest of
romances, written down with the exactitude of a business diary; a view of
men and cities from Naples to Berlin, from Madrid and London to
Constantinople and St. Petersburg; the 'vie intime' of the eighteenth
century depicted by a man, who to-day sat with cardinals and saluted
crowned heads, and to morrow lurked in dens of profligacy and crime; a
book of confessions penned without reticence and without penitence; a
record of forty years of "occult" charlatanism; a collection of tales of
successful imposture, of 'bonnes fortunes', of marvellous escapes, of
transcendent audacity, told with the humour of Smollett and the delicate
wit of Voltaire. Who is there interested in men and letters, and in the
life of the past, who would not cry, "Where can such a book as this be
found?"