CASANOVA'S HOMECOMING

BY

ARTHUR SCHNITZLER

1922


The Translation of this book was made by EDEN AND CEDAR PAUL




CHAPTER ONE.


Casanova was in his fifty-third year. Though no longer driven by the
lust of adventure that had spurred him in his youth, he was still hunted
athwart the world, hunted now by a restlessness due to the approach of
old age. His yearning for Venice, the city of his birth, grew so intense
that, like a wounded bird slowly circling downwards in its death flight,
he began to move in ever-narrowing circles. Again and again, during the
last ten years of his exile, he had implored the Supreme Council for
leave to return home. Erstwhile, in the drafting of these petitions--a
work in which he was a past master--a defiant, wilful spirit seemed to
have guided his pen; at times even he appeared to take a grim delight in
his forwardness. But of late his requests had been couched in humble,
beseeching words which displayed, ever more plainly, the ache of
homesickness and genuine repentance.