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
directions, and yet hardly any one has ever taken the trouble, or
obtained the permission, to make a careful examination in precisely the
one place where information was most likely to be found. The very
existence of the manuscripts at Dux was known only to a few, and to most
of these only on hearsay; and thus the singular good fortune was reserved
for me, on my visit to Count Waldstein in September 1899, to be the first
to discover the most interesting things contained in these manuscripts.
M. Octave Uzanne, though he had not himself visited Dux, had indeed
procured copies of some of the manuscripts, a few of which were published
by him in Le Livre, in 1887 and 1889. But with the death of Le Livre in
1889 the 'Casanova inedit' came to an end, and has never, so far as I
know, been continued elsewhere. Beyond the publication of these
fragments, nothing has been done with the manuscripts at Dux, nor has an
account of them ever been given by any one who has been allowed to
examine them.

For five years, ever since I had discovered the documents in the Venetian
archives, I had wanted to go to Dux; and in 1899, when I was staying with
Count Lutzow at Zampach, in Bohemia, I found the way kindly opened for