Casanova, having received a sum of money from his friends in Venice, passed on to Munich, where he obtained permission to reside until he went to Paris in the winter of 1757, where good luck befriended him and he became one of the directors of the national lottery; he made a large income and for a time was on the top of the wave. It is beyond the scope of this volume to follow him in his varied and adventurous career in which he so nearly secured a substantial fortune but constantly missed it from the want of the more sterling qualities of steadiness and honesty. He was always a frank Bohemian, a reckless gambler and unprincipled roué and charlatan, imposing on the credulity of foolish ladies who believed him to be possessed of supernatural gifts and the secret of the “philosopher’s stone.” Bankers and great financiers befriended him and helped him to make large sums; but he wasted his capital in a foolish attempt at manufacturing printed silk at Lyons, which failed, and he was brought to the verge of ruin. He next wandered through Europe as a professional gambler, cutting a great figure in the best society at times, in which, however, he was laughed at and despised. He led a life of intrigue, fought duels, won much money, not always by fair means, and by degrees gained an evil reputation and the attentions of the police, who constantly warned him to “move on” from the capitals and great cities. Nothing prospered with him and in these days of decadence he made fresh acquaintance with the interior of prisons. When in London he was locked up in Newgate as the penalty of being engaged in a street brawl. In Madrid he was lodged in the prison of the Buen Petiro, and was afterward for a time in the citadel of Barcelona. When his fortunes were at the lowest ebb he obtained permission to return to Venice and lived in obscurity for a time in his native city; but again he visited Paris, where he made friends with Count Waldstein who offered him the hospitality of his castle at Dux in Bohemia. Here he was appointed librarian on a modest pittance and spent the last fourteen years of his life, a broken miserable man, subjected, as he thought, to constant indignities and enduring all the pangs of exile from his native Venice, with no one to console him in his last hours. CHAPTER X THE VICARIA OF NAPLES Prisons of the Two Sicilies--Castel Capuano called the Vicaria--Notorious reputation--Ill-treatment of political prisoners--British indignation--Mr. Gladstone’s open letter to Lord Aberdeen--Reforms promised but not carried out--Prison at Palermo--Island prisons--Nisida--Description of convict life there--Interior of the prison--The Camorra--Its powerful influence in the prisons--Details of organisation--Vitality of Camorrists--Prominent members defy authority--Society makes its own laws and enforces them rigidly--Still in existence in the south and especially in the convict colonies.