decision, is not a threat, but an effort worthy of a hero, which ought to call for your esteem.  I beg of you to consider that we cannot afford to lose time.  The word choose must not sound harshly in your ears, since it leaves my fate as well as yours entirely in your hands.  To feel certain of my love, do you want to see me kneeling before you like a simpleton, crying and entreating you to take pity on me?  No, madam, that would certainly displease you, and it would not help me.  I am conscious of being worthy of your love, I therefore ask for that feeling and not for pity.  Leave me, if I displease you, but let me go away; for if you are humane enough to wish that I should forget you, allow me to go far away from you so as to make my sorrow less immense.  Should I follow you to Parma, I would not answer for myself, for I might give way to my despair.  Consider everything well, I beseech you; you would indeed be guilty of great cruelty, were you to answer now:  ’Come to Parma, although I must beg of you not to see me in that city.’  Confess that you cannot, in all fairness, give me such an answer; am I not right?”

“Certainly, if you truly love me.”

“Good God! if I love you?  Oh, yes! believe me, my love is immense, sincere!  Now, decide my fate.”

“What! always the same song?”

“Yes.”

“But are you aware that you look very angry?”

“No, for it is not so.  I am only in a state of uncontrollable excitement, in one of the decisive hours of my life, a prey to the most fearful anxiety.  I ought to curse my whimsical destiny and the ‘sbirri’ of Cesena (may God curse them, too!), for, without them, I should never have known you.”

“Are you, then, so very sorry to have made my acquaintance?”

“Have I not some reason to be so?”

“No, for I have not given you my decision yet.”

“Now I breathe more freely, for I am sure you will tell me to accompany you to Parma.”

“Yes, come to Parma.”

MEMOIRS OF JACQUES CASANOVA de SEINGALT 1725-1798

To Paris and prison, Volume 2a—­Paris

The rare unabridged London edition of 1894 translated by Arthur Machen to
which has been added the chapters discovered by Arthur Symons.

PARIS

CHAPTER I

Leave Bologna a Happy Man—­The Captain Parts from Us in Reggio, where I
Spend a Delightful Night with Henriette—­Our Arrival in Parma—­Henriette
Resumes the Costume of a Woman; Our Mutual Felicity—­I Meet Some
Relatives of Mine, but Do not Discover Myself