original in his conceptions. He welcomed me, and said he was
glad to be able to lodge me at his house in Rome, and that he hoped to
return home himself in a few days, with his whole family.

I was astonished with the Villa Albani. It had been built by Cardinal
Alexander, and had been wholly constructed from antique materials to
satisfy the cardinal's love for classic art; not only the statues and the
vases, but the columns, the pedestals--in fact, everything was Greek. He
was a Greek himself, and had a perfect knowledge of antique work, and had
contrived to spend comparatively little money compared with the
masterpiece he had produced. If a sovereign monarch had had a villa like
the cardinal's built, it would have cost him fifty million francs, but
the cardinal made a much cheaper bargain.

As he could not get any ancient ceilings, he was obliged to have them
painted, and Mengs was undoubtedly the greatest and the most laborious
painter of his age. It is a great pity that death carried him off in the
midst of his career, as otherwise he would have enriched the stores of
art with numerous masterpieces. My brother never did anything to justify
his title of pupil of this great artist. When I come to my visit to Spain
in 1767, I shall have some more to say about Mengs.

As soon as I was settled with my brother I hired a carriage, a coachman,
and a footman, whom I put into fancy livery, and I called on Monsignor
Cornaro, auditor of the 'rota', with the intention of making my way into
good society, but fearing lest he as a Venetian might get compromised, he
introduced me to Cardinal Passionei, who spoke of me to the sovereign
pontiff.

Before I pass on to anything else, I will inform my readers of what took
place on the occasion of my second visit to this old cardinal, a great
enemy of the Jesuits, a wit, and man of letters.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Adventures In The South: Return to
Italy, by Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

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