GIACOMO CASANOVA. — Adventurer, born in Venice on 2 Apr. 1725, died on 4 June 1798 at Dux (Bohemia), where he had retired to the count of Waldstein’s castle as librarian and wrote his *Mémoires*, reliving his thousand amorous and business enterprises, his travels, his gambling and courtly adventures. He had been in France, Dresden, Vienna, Prague, St Petersburg, Holland, Switzerland, everywhere weaving ruinous commercial schemes and amorous intrigues. In 1755 he was arrested and tried on charges of Freemasonry and magic, but after fifteen months in prison he managed to escape from the Piombi (see the *Histoire de sa fuite*, Leipzig 1788).
Despite some open declarations of deference to religion (“chaque chose qu’il avait faite c’était par l’ordre de Dieu,” he had the prince de Ligne say), C. was a man exclusively thirsty for worldly life. His roaming, living by expedients, his *esprit* of a libertine, mark the history of eighteenth-century manners, of which he, with Cagliostro, is the most dazzling representative. Posthumously, in 1822, the *Mémoires* were published.