The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Volume 16: Depart Switzerland — A Closer Reading

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In Category - Memoirs

Authors: Casanova, Giacomo, 1725-1798, Machen, Arthur, 1863-1947 [Translator] Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2004 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: Casanova, Giacomo, 1725-1798; Europe -- History -- 18th century -- Biography Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

Edition facts

Words 32,634

Reading time 142 min

Text sections 3

The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Volume 16: Depart Switzerland — A Closer Reading can be approached with a clearer sense of reading commitment from its source measurements: 32,634 words, 2 hr 22 min estimated reading time, and 3 detected text sections.

The text analysis averages about 19.2 words per sentence, while the detected sections provide another way to judge how the source is divided.

Project Gutenberg metadata also associates the work with “Casanova, Giacomo, 1725-1798,” connecting these edition facts with the source record’s subject description.

Source: Project Gutenberg record #2966

In Volume 16 of Casanova's memoirs, the narrator departs Switzerland for Grenoble and Avignon, where he navigates social games, failed seductions, and a frank exchange with a fellow nobleman about a woman's puzzling refusal of money.

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Europe were only a seraglio kept for my pleasures. I told the baron I should like to know her.

"She is a good girl," said he, "who sees no company, and is quite poor."

"Those are three reasons which make me the more anxious to know her."

"You will really find nothing to do in that quarter."

"There is her aunt, I will introduce you to her as we leave the concert-room."

After doing me this service, he came to sup with me. The door-keeper and cook struck me as being very like Lebel. He made his two pretty daughters wait on me, and I saw that Valenglard was delighted at having lodged me to my satisfaction, but he grumbled when he saw fifteen dishes.

"He is making a fool of you and me," he said.

"On the contrary, he has guessed my tastes. Don't you think everything was very good?"

"I don't deny it, but . . . . "

"Don't be afraid; I love spending my money."

"I beg your pardon, I only want you to be pleased."

We had exquisite wines, and at dessert some ratafia superior to the Turkish 'visnat' I had tasted seventeen years before at Yussuf Ali's. When my landlord came up at the end of supper, I told him that he ought to be Louis XV.'s head cook.

"Go on as you have begun, and do better if you can; but let me have your bill every morning."

"You are quite right; with such an arrangement one can tell how one is getting on."

"I should like you always to give me ices, and you must let me have two more lights. But, unless I am mistaken, those are candles that I see. I am a Venetian, and accustomed to wax lights."

"That is your servant's fault, sir."

"Because, after eating a good supper, he went to bed, saying he was ill. Thus I heard nothing as to how you liked things done."

"Very good, you shall learn from my own lips."

"He asked my wife to make chocolate for you tomorrow morning; he gave her the chocolate, I will make it myself."

When he had left the room M. de Valenglard said, in a manner that was at the same time pleased and surprised, that Madame d'Urfe had been apparently joking in telling him to spare me all expense.

"It's her goodness of heart. I am obliged to her all the same. She is an excellent woman."

We stayed at table till eleven o'clock, discussing in numerable pleasant topics, and animating our talk with that choice liqueur made at Grenoble, of which we drank a bottle. It is composed of the juice of cherries, brandy, sugar, and cinnamon, and cannot be surpassed, I am sure, by the nectar of Olympus.

I sent home the baron in my carriage, after thanking him for his services, and begging him to be my companion early and late while I stayed at Grenoble--a re quest which he granted excepting for those days on which he was on duty. At supper I had given him my bill of exchange on Zappata, which I endorsed with the name de Seingalt, which Madame d'Urfe had given me. He discounted it for me next day. A banker brought me four hundred louis and I had thirteen hundred in my cash-box. I always had a dread of penuriousness, and I delighted myself at the thought that M. de Valenglard would write and tell Madame d'Urfe, who was always preaching economy to me, what he had seen. I escorted my guest to the carriage, and I was agreeably surprised when I got back to find the doorkeeper's two charming daughters.

Le Duc had not waited for me to tell him to find some pretext for not serving me. He knew my tastes, and that when there were pretty girls in a house, the less I saw of him the better I was pleased.

The frank eagerness of the two girls to wait on me, their utter freedom from suspicion or coquetry, made me determine that I would shew myself deserving of their trust. They took off my shoes and stockings, did my hair and put on my night-gown with perfect propriety on both sides. When I was in bed I wished them a goodnight, and told them to shut the door and bring me my chocolate at eight o'clock next morning.

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The volume opens with Casanova amused at the plight of the Marquis de Prie and company, whom he left coveting his cash-box. Arriving in Grenoble, he quickly secures a lodging through an officer named Valenglard, who arranges rooms with a door-keeper whose cooking is so good that the rent is effectively free. The narrator’s attention is immediately drawn to a modestly dressed brunette at a concert, setting the stage for a series of social encounters that hinge on money, manners, and misreading.

Lodging and the Door-Keeper’s Bargain

The arrangement with the door-keeper is a small but revealing transaction. Casanova takes three rooms and orders supper for two, warning that he is “dainty, liked good things, and did not care for the cost.” The door-keeper counters that if Casanova is not pleased, he will pay nothing. This barter—lodging in exchange for the chance to show off cooking—reflects a world where hospitality is a calculated performance. The door-keeper’s wife and three charming daughters bow profoundly on the ground floor, a detail that hints at the household’s readiness to please. Casanova’s first move is to attend a concert, but he refuses introductions, preferring to survey the women before deciding whom to know. The excerpt shows a narrator who treats social life as a series of strategic choices, from rooms to romantic targets.

The Marquis of Grimaldi’s Confession

In Avignon, Casanova meets the Marquis of Grimaldi, a Genoese nobleman who greets him by name and immediately shares a failed seduction attempt. The marquis describes approaching a beautiful but sad woman at supper, offering her a hundred louis, and being refused with “an air of disdain.” He is baffled: “knowing, as I do, that she has no money, her manner astonished me.” Casanova then reveals his own parallel failure, and the two laugh together at their “bad fortune.” This scene is notable for its frankness: the marquis volunteers his story without prompting, and Casanova reciprocates. The conversation treats the woman’s refusal as a puzzle to be solved, not a moral boundary. The marquis bets she will still eat supper—and wins—prompting Casanova to conclude she is “playing a part.” The episode underscores how the memoir treats romantic pursuit as a game of reading signs, where money is a tool and resistance a move.

The Comte de Bussi’s Impudent Courtship

At supper, a Comte de Bussi sits next to the same woman and begins “to make love to his fair neighbour forthwith,” teasing her in a thousand ways while she remains “as dumb as a statue.” Casanova and Grimaldi watch with amusement, struggling to keep their countenances. The young count is described as “good-natured, a wit, and inclined to broad jokes,” but his manner “bordered on the impudent.” He does all the talking and laughing, apparently unaware that she might be laughing at him. The scene is a comic contrast to the earlier, more gentlemanly approaches: where the marquis offered money discreetly and was refused, Bussi simply assumes his charm will win the day. Casanova’s narration stays detached, observing the social theater without intervening. The woman’s silence becomes a weapon, and the men’s reactions—bafflement, amusement, persistence—reveal the assumptions they bring to the encounter.

Readers should attend to the recurring pattern of failed or ambiguous transactions—money, lodging, seduction—that structure Casanova’s narrative. The excerpts offer no resolution to the woman’s story, and the volume’s title promises a departure from Switzerland that has already occurred by the opening. The memoir’s interest lies less in outcomes than in the play of appearances and the narrator’s cool, often amused, dissection of social rituals.

That afternoon, rain blurred the windows while Casanova lingered over a woman’s stubborn refusal—not of his affection, but of his gold. Strange, how pride and silence echo across centuries. Later, idly, I found myself in the admiral’s letters, where duty weighed differently, yet the same quiet stubbornness shaped whole voyages. Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez, Vol. I — Reading Companion felt like turning to a calmer, salt-tinged sequel.