Page:The Way of a Virgin.djvu/83

Rh are at liberty to skip over any offensive pictures, and I think it my duty to give them this piece of advice……

"My Memoirs are not written for young persons who, in order to avoid false step and slippery roads, ought to spend their youth in blissful ignorance, but for those who, having thorough experience of life, are no longer exposed to temptation, and who, having but too often gone through the fire, are like salamanders, and can be scorched by it no more……I have no hesitation in saying that the really virtuous are those persons who can practise virtue without the slightest trouble; such persons are always full of toleration, and it is to them that my Memoirs are addressed……"

Casanova, as he himself tells us, was three score and twelve years when he wrote his Memoirs. The writing, he adds, was both a solace and a pleasure. Nevertheless, as the English translator says in his appendix, "the last five years of his life were passed in petty mortifications…… Death came to him somewhat as a release. He received the sacraments with devotion, exclaimed: 'Great God, and all ye who witness my death, I have lived a philosopher and I die a Christian,' and so died—a quiet ending to a wonderfully brilliant and entirely useless career."