m any office,
whether as tutor, librarian, or chamberlain. In one quarter only is he
well received--namely, by the famous Duke of Weimar; but in a few days he
becomes madly jealous of the duke's more famous proteges, Goethe and
Wieland, and goes off declaiming against them and German literature
generally--with which literature he was wholly unacquainted. From Weimar
to Berlin; where there are Jews to whom he has introductions. Casanova
thinks them ignorant, superstitious, and knavish; but they lend him
money, and he gives bills on Count Wallenstein, which are paid. In six
weeks the wanderer returns to Dux, and is welcomed with open arms; his
journeys are over at last.

But not his troubles. A week after his return there are strawberries at
dessert; everyone is served before himself, and when the plate comes
round to him it is empty. Worse still: his portrait is missing from his
room, and is discovered 'salement placarde a la porte des lieux
d'aisance'!

Five more years of life remained to him. They were passed in such petty
mortifications as we have narrated, in grieving over his 'afreuse
vieillesse', and in laments over the conquest of his native land Venice,
once so splendid and powerful. His appetite began to fail, and with it
failed his last source of pleasure, so death came to him somewhat as a
release. He received the sacraments with devotion, exclaimed,--

"Grand Dieu, et vous tous temoins de ma mort, j'ai vecu en philosophe, et
je meurs en Chretien," and so died.

It was a quiet ending to a wonderfully brilliant and entirely useless
career. It has been suggested that if the age in which Casanova lived had
been less corrupt, he himself might have used his all but universal
talents to some advantage, but to our mind Casanova would always have
remained Casanova. He came of a family of adventurers, and the reader of
his Memoirs will remark how he continually ruined his prospects by his
ineradicable love for disreputable company. His "Bohemianism" was in his
blood, and in his old age he regrets--not his past follies, but his
inability to commit folly any longer. Now and again we are inclined to
pronounce Casanova to be an amiable man; and if to his generosity and
good nature he had added some elementary knowledge of the distinction
between right and wrong, he might certainly have laid some claim to the
character. The Prince de Ligne draws the following portrait of him under
the name of Aventuros:

"He would be