en on paper similar to that on which the Memoirs are
written; the pages are numbered 104-148; and though it is described as
Extrait, it seems to contain, at all events, the greater part of the
missing chapters to which I have already referred, Chapters IV. and V. of
the last volume of the Memoirs. In this manuscript we find Armeline and
Scolastica, whose story is interrupted by the abrupt ending of Chapter
III.; we find Mariuccia of Vol. VII, Chapter IX., who married a
hairdresser; and we find also Jaconine, whom Casanova recognises as his
daughter, 'much prettier than Sophia, the daughter of Therese Pompeati,
whom I had left at London.' It is curious that this very important
manuscript, which supplies the one missing link in the Memoirs, should
never have been discovered by any of the few people who have had the
opportunity of looking over the Dux manuscripts. I am inclined to explain
it by the fact that the case in which I found this manuscript contains
some papers not relating to Casanova. Probably, those who looked into
this case looked no further. I have told Herr Brockhaus of my discovery,
and I hope to see Chapters IV. and V. in their places when the
long-looked-for edition of the complete text is at length given to the
world.
Another manuscript which I found tells with great piquancy the whole
story of the Abbe de Brosses' ointment, the curing of the Princess de
Conti's pimples, and the birth of the Duc de Montpensier, which is told
very briefly, and with much less point, in the Memoirs (vol. iii., p.
327). Readers of the Memoirs will remember the duel at Warsaw with Count
Branicki in 1766 (vol. X., pp. 274-320), an affair which attracted a good
deal of attention at the time, and of which there is an account in a
letter from the Abbe Taruffi to the dramatist, Francesco Albergati, dated
Warsaw, March 19, 1766, quoted in Ernesto Masi's Life of Albergati,
Bologna, 1878. A manuscript at Dux in Casanova's handwriting gives an
account of this duel in the third person; it is entitled, 'Description de
l'affaire arrivee a Varsovie le 5 Mars, 1766'. D'Ancona, in the Nuova
Antologia (vol. lxvii., p. 412), referring to the Abbe Taruffi's account,
mentions what he considers to be a slight discrepancy: that Taruffi
refers to the danseuse, about whom the duel was fought, as La Casacci,
while Casanova refers to her as La Catai. In this manuscript Casanova
always refers to her as La Casacci; La Catai is evidently one of M.
Laf
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