ough
often suggested by something closely personal, branch off into more
general considerations; or else begin with general considerations, and
end with a case in point. Thus, for instance, a fragment of three pages
begins: 'A compliment which is only made to gild the pill is a positive
impertinence, and Monsieur Bailli is nothing but a charlatan; the monarch
ought to have spit in his face, but the monarch trembled with fear.' A
manuscript entitled 'Essai d'Egoisme,' dated, 'Dux, this 27th June,
1769,' contains, in the midst of various reflections, an offer to let his
'appartement' in return for enough money to 'tranquillise for six months
two Jew creditors at Prague.' Another manuscript is headed 'Pride and
Folly,' and begins with a long series of antitheses, such as: 'All fools
are not proud, and all proud men are fools. Many fools are happy, all
proud men are unhappy.' On the same sheet follows this instance or
application:

Whether it is possible to compose a Latin distich of the greatest beauty
without knowing either the Latin language or prosody. We must examine the
possibility and the impossibility, and afterwards see who is the man who
says he is the author of the distich, for there are extraordinary people
in the world. My brother, in short, ought to have composed the distich,
because he says so, and because he confided it to me tete-'a-tete. I had,
it is true, difficulty in believing him; but what is one to do! Either
one must believe, or suppose him capable of telling a lie which could
only be told by a fool; and that is impossible, for all Europe knows that
my brother is not a fool.

Here, as so often in these manuscripts, we seem to see Casanova thinking
on paper. He uses scraps of paper (sometimes the blank page of a letter,
on the other side of which we see the address) as a kind of informal
diary; and it is characteristic of him, of the man of infinitely curious
mind, which this adventurer really was, that there are so few merely
personal notes among these casual jottings. Often, they are purely
abstract; at times, metaphysical 'jeux d'esprit,' like the sheet of
fourteen 'Different Wagers,' which begins:

I wager that it is not true that a man who weighs a hundred pounds will
weigh more if you kill him. I wager that if there is any difference, he
will weigh less. I wager that diamond powder has not sufficient force to
kill a man.

Side by side with these fanciful excursions into science, come more
s