d through the Memoirs are many of Casanova's thoughts about his
old age. Some were possibly incorporated in the original text, others
possibly added when he revised the text in 1797. These vary from
resignation to bitterness, doubtless depending on Casanova's state of
mind at the moment he wrote them:

"Now that I am seventy-two years old, I believe myself no longer
susceptible of such follies. But alas! that is the very thing which
causes me to be miserable."

"I hate old age which offers only what I already know, unless I should
take up a gazette."

"Age has calmed my passions by rendering them powerless, but my heart has
not grown old and my memory has kept all the freshness of youth."

"No, I have not forgotten her [Henriette]; for even now, when my head is
covered with white hair, the recollection of her is still a source of
happiness for my heart."

"A scene which, even now, excites my mirth."

"Age, that cruel and unavoidable disease, compels me to be in good
health, in spite of myself."

"Now that I am but the shadow of the once brilliant Casanova, I love to
chatter."

"Now that age has whitened my hair and deadened the ardor of my senses,
my imagination does not take such a high flight and I think differently."

"What embitters my old age is that, having a heart as warm as ever, I
have no longer the strength necessary to secure a single day as blissful
as those which I owed to this charming girl."

"When I recall these events, I grow young again and feel once more the
delights of youth, despite the long years which separate me from that
happy time."

"Now that I am getting into my dotage, I look on the dark side of
everything. I am invited to a wedding and see naught but gloom; and,
witnessing the coronation of Leopold II, at Prague, I say to myself,
'Nolo coronari'. Cursed old age, thou art only worthy of dwelling in
hell."

"The longer I live, the more interest I take in my papers. They are the
treasure which attaches me to life and makes death more hateful still."

And so on, through the Memoirs, Casanova supplies his own picture,
knowing very well that the end, even of his cherished memories, is not
far distant.

In 1797, Casanova relates an amusing, but irritating incident, which
resulted in the loss of the first three chapters of the second volume of
the Memoirs through the carelessness of a servant girl at Dux who took
the papers "old, written upon, covered with scribbling and erasures,