everal attempts at a preface, in which we see the
actual preface coming gradually into form. One is entitled _Casanova au
Lecteur_, another _Histoire de mon Existence_, and a third _Preface_.
There is also a brief and characteristic _Precis de ma vie_, dated
November 17, 1797. Some of these have been printed in _Le Livre_, 1887.
But by far the most important manuscript that I discovered, one which,
apparently, I am the first to discover, is a manuscript entitled
_Extrait du Chapitre 4 et 5_. It is written 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 Armelline 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.'[3]
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 Casan