The Prince de Rosenberg said to me, as we went down stairs, that
Madame de Rosenberg was dead, and asked me if the Comte de
Waldstein had in the library the illustration of the Villa
d'Altichiero, which the Emperor had asked for in vain at the city
library of Prague, and when I answered 'yes,' he gave an equivocal
laugh. A moment afterwards, he asked me if he might tell the
Emperor. 'Why not, monseigneur? It is not a secret.' 'Is His
Majesty coming to Dux?' 'If he goes to Oberlaitensdorf (_sic_) he
will go to Dux, too; and he may ask you for it, for there is a
monument there which relates to him when he was Grand Duke.' 'In
that case, His Majesty can also see my critical remarks on the
Egyptian prints.'
The Emperor asked me this morning, 6th October, how I employed my
time at Dux, and I told him that I was making an Italian anthology.
'You have all the Italians, then?' 'All, sire.' See what a lie
leads to. If I had not lied in saying that I was making an
anthology, I should not have found myself obliged to lie again in
saying that we have all the Italian poets. If the Emperor comes to
Dux, I shall kill myself.
'They say that this Dux is a delightful spot,' says Casanova in one of
the most personal of his notes, 'and I see that it might be for many;
but not for me, for what delights me in my old age is independent of the
place which I inhabit. When I do not sleep I dream, and when I am tired
of dreaming I blacken paper, then I read, and most often reject all that
my pen has vomited.' Here we see him blackening paper, on every
occasion, and for every purpose. In one bundle I found an unfinished
story about Roland, and some adventure with women in a cave; then a
'Meditation on arising from sleep, 19th May 1789'; then a 'Short
Reflection of a Philosopher who finds himself thinking of procuring his
own death. At Dux, on getting out of bed on 13th October 1793, day
dedicated to St. Lucy, memorable in my too long life.' A big budget,
containing cryptograms, is headed 'Grammatical Lottery'; and there is
the title-page of a treatise on _The Duplication of the Hexahedron,
demonstrated geometrically to all the Universities and all the Academies
of Europe_.[2] There are innumerable verses, French and Italian, in all
stages, occasionally attaining the finality of these lines, which appear
in half a dozen tentative forms:
_Sans mystere point de plaisirs,_
_Sans silence point de mystere._
_Charme divin de mes loisirs,_
_Solitude! que tu m'es chere!_
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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