1774 until 1782. At the end of 1782 he left Venice; and next year we find
him in Paris, where, in 1784, he met Count Waldstein at the Venetian
Ambassador's, and was invited by him to become his librarian at Dux. He
accepted, and for the fourteen remaining years of his life lived at Dux,
where he wrote his Memoirs.

Casanova died in 1798, but nothing was heard of the Memoirs (which the
Prince de Ligne, in his own Memoirs, tells us that Casanova had read to
him, and in which he found 'du dyamatique, de la rapidite, du comique, de
la philosophie, des choses neuves, sublimes, inimitables meme') until the
year 1820, when a certain Carlo Angiolini brought to the publishing house
of Brockhaus, in Leipzig, a manuscript entitled Histoire de ma vie jusqu
a l'an 1797, in the handwriting of Casanova. This manuscript, which I
have examined at Leipzig, is written on foolscap paper, rather rough and
yellow; it is written on both sides of the page, and in sheets or quires;
here and there the paging shows that some pages have been omitted, and in
their place are smaller sheets of thinner and whiter paper, all in
Casanova's handsome, unmistakable handwriting. The manuscript is done up
in twelve bundles, corresponding with the twelve volumes of the original
edition; and only in one place is there a gap. The fourth and fifth
chapters of the twelfth volume are missing, as the editor of the original
edition points out, adding: 'It is not probable that these two chapters
have been withdrawn from the manuscript of Casanova by a strange hand;
everything leads us to believe that the author himself suppressed them,
in the intention, no doubt, of re-writing them, but without having found
time to do so.' The manuscript ends abruptly with the year 1774, and not
with the year 1797, as the title would lead us to suppose.

This manuscript, in its original state, has never been printed. Herr
Brockhaus, on obtaining possession of the manuscript, had it translated