stion was put to me, to which
I answered in such a manner as to elicit another question, but to no
purpose. I saw that the rank of my brother, who had introduced me,
prevented my being thought a person of any consequence, and on hearing an
abbe say, "He's Casanova's brother," I turned to him and said,--

"That's not correct; you should say Casanova's my brother."

"That comes to the same thing."

"Not at all, my dear abbe."

I said these words in a tone which commanded attention, and another abbe
said,--

"The gentleman is quite right; it does not come to the same thing."

The first abbe made no reply to this. The one who had taken my part, and
was my friend from that moment, was the famous Winckelmann, who was
unhappily assassinated at Trieste twelve years afterwards.

While I was talking to him, Cardinal Alexander Albani arrived.
Winckelmann presented me to his eminence, who was nearly blind. He talked
to me a great deal, without saying anything worth listening to. As soon
as he heard that I was the Casanova who had escaped from The Leads, he
said in a somewhat rude tone that he wondered I had the hardihood to come
to Rome, where on the slightest hint from the State Inquisitors at Venice
an 'ordine sanctissimo' would re-consign me to my prison. I was annoyed
by this unseemly remark, and replied in a dignified voice,--

"It is not my hardihood in coming to Rome that your eminence should
wonder at, but a man of any sense would wonder at the Inquisitors if they
had the hardihood to issue an 'ordine sanctissimo' against me; for they
would be perplexed to allege any crime in me as a pretext for thus
infamously depriving me of my liberty."

This reply silenced his eminence. He was ashamed at having taken me for a
fool, and to see that I thought him one. Shortly after I left and never
set foot in that house again.

The Abbe Winckelmann went out with my brother and myself, and as he came
with me to my hotel he did me the honour of staying to supper.
Winckelmann was the second volume of the celebrated Abbe de Voisenon. He
called for me next day, and we went to Villa Albani to see the Chevalier
Mengs, who was then living there and painting a ceiling.

My landlord Roland (who knew my brother) paid me a visit at supper.
Roland came from Avignon and was fond of good living. I told him I was
sorry to be leaving him to stay with my brother, because I had fallen in
love with his daughter Therese, although I had only spoke