Page:The Way of a Virgin.djvu/80

Rh Mrs. Comely and the fast taverns of the London of 1760; we pass from Versailles to the Winter Palace of St. Petersburg in the days of Catherine, from the policy of the Great Frederick to the lewd mirth of strolling-players, and the presence-chamber of the Vatican is succeeded by an intrigue in a garret.

"It is indeed a new experience to read this history of a man who, refraining from nothing, has concealed nothing; of one who stood in the courts of Louis the Magnificent for Madame de Pompadour and the nobles of the ancien règime, and had an affair with an adventuress of Denmark Street, Soho; who was bound over to keep the peace by Fielding, and knew Cagliostro.

"The friend of popes and kings and noblemen, and of all the male and female ruffians and vagabonds of Europe, abbé, soldier, charlatan, gamester, financier, diplomatist, viveur, philosopher, virtuoso, 'chemist, fiddler, and buffon,' each of these, and all of these, was Giacomo Casanova, Chevalier de Seingalt, Knight of the Golden Spur."

The English translation of Casanova's Memoirs, from which the foregoing is taken, is a valuable work. To-day the twelve volume set, of which 1,000 copies were privately printed in 1894, commands anything from thirty to forty-five pounds in the sale-room or book-seller's shop. We have been told that the printer of this English version was prosecuted, and all copies of the work confiscated by the police, who were ordered to burn them. Further, we are told that the copies we buy and read to-day are the copies burned by the police.