The sins of his earlier years (the most unpardonable to the Venetian
councillors was his free-thinking, not his dissoluteness, or
quarrelsomeness, or rather sportive knavery) were by degrees passing
into oblivion, and so Casanova had a certain amount of confidence that
he would receive a hearing. The history of his marvellous escape from
The Leads of Venice, which he had recounted on innumerable occasions at
the courts of princes, in the palaces of nobles, at the supper tables of
burghers, and in houses of ill fame, was beginning to make people forget
any disrepute which had attached to his name. Moreover, in letters to
Mantua, where he had been staying for two months, persons of influence
had conveyed hope to the adventurer, whose inward and outward lustre
were gradually beginning to fade, that ere long there would come a
favorable turn in his fortunes.

Since his means were now extremely slender, Casanova had decided to
await the expected pardon in the modest but respectable inn where he had
stayed in happier years. To make only passing mention of less spiritual
amusements, with which he could not wholly dispense--he spent most of
his time in writing a polemic against the slanderer Voltaire, hoping
that the publication of this document would serve, upon his return to
Venice, to give him unchallenged position and prestige in the eyes of
all well-disposed citizens.

One morning he went out for a walk beyond the town limits to excogitate
the final touches for some sentences that were to annihilate the infidel
Frenchman. Suddenly he fell prey to a disquiet that almost amounted
to physical distress. He turned over in his mind the life he had
been leading for the last three months. It had grown wearisomely
familiar--the morning walks into the country, the evenings spent in