Old Age and Death The Memoirs Of Jacques Casanova De Seingalt ...

23
and eating like a wolf.
On the 30th July he wrote to Francesca from Spa and in this letter
enclosed a good coin. Everything was dear at Spa; his room cost eight
lires a day with everything else in proportion.
On the 6th September he wrote from Antwerp to one of his good friends,
the Abbe Eusebio della Lena, telling him that at Spa an English woman who
had a passion for speaking Latin wished to submit him to trials which he
judged it unnecessary to state precisely. He refused all her proposals,
saying, however, that he would not reveal them to anyone; but that he did
not feel he should refuse also "an order on her banker for twenty-five
guineas."
On the 9th he wrote to Francesca from Brussels, and on the 12th he sent
her a bill of exchange on the banker Corrado for one hundred and fifty
lires. He said he had been intoxicated "because his reputation had
required it." "This greatly astonishes me," Francesca responded, "for I
have never seen you intoxicated nor even illuminated . . . . I am very
happy that the wine drove away the inflammation in your teeth."
Practically all information of Casanova's movements in 1783 and 1784 is
obtained from Francesca's letters which were in the library at Dux.
In her letters of the 27th June and 11th July, Francesca wrote Casanova
that she had directed the Jew Abraham to sell Casanova's satin habit and
velvet breeches, but could not hope for more than fifty lires because
they were patched. Abraham had observed that at one time the habit had
been placed in pledge with him by Casanova for three sequins.
On the 6th September, she wrote: