e letters from Henriette,
whose loss every writer on Casanova has lamented. Henriette, it will be
remembered, makes her first appearance at Cesena, in the year 1748;
after their meeting at Geneva, she reappears, romantically _a propos_,
twenty-two years later, at Aix in Provence; and she writes to Casanova
proposing _un commerce epistolaire_, asking him what he has done since
his escape from prison, and promising to do her best to tell him all
that has happened to her during the long interval. After quoting her
letter, he adds: 'I replied to her, accepting the correspondence that
she offered me, and telling her briefly all my vicissitudes. She related
to me in turn, in some forty letters, all the history of her life. If
she dies before me, I shall add these letters to these _Memoirs_; but
to-day she is still alive, and always happy, though now old.' It has
never been known what became of these letters, and why they were not
added to the _Memoirs_. I have found a great quantity of them, some
signed with her married name in full, 'Henriette de Schnetzmann,' and I
am inclined to think that she survived Casanova, for one of the letters
is dated Bayreuth, 1798, the year of Casanova's death. They are
remarkably charming, written with a mixture of piquancy and
distinction; and I will quote the characteristic beginning and end of
the last letter I was able to find. It begins: 'No, it is impossible to
be sulky with you!' and ends: 'If I become vicious, it is you, my
Mentor, who make me so, and I cast my sins upon you. Even if I were
damned I should still be your most devoted friend, Henriette de
Schnetzmann.' Casanova was twenty-three when he met Henriette; now,
herself an old woman, she writes to him when he is seventy-three, as if
the fifty years that had passed were blotted out in the faithful
affection of her memory. How many more discreet and less changing lovers
have had the quality of constancy in change, to which this life-long
correspondence bears witness? Does it not suggest a view of Casanova not
quite the view of all the world? To me it shows the real man, who
perhaps of all others best understood what Shelley meant when he said:

True love in this differs from gold or clay,
That to divide is not to take away.

But, though the letters from women naturally interested me the most,
they were only a certain proportion of the great mass of correspondence
which I turned over. There were letters from Carlo An