Just as I was going, five or six well-known Englishmen appeared to bail me out, and were mortified to hear that they had come too late.  They begged me to forgive the laws of the land, which are only too often converted into a means for the annoyance of foreigners.

At last, after one of the most tedious days I have ever spent, I returned home and went to bed, laughing at the experience I had undergone.

MEMOIRS OF JACQUES CASANOVA de SEINGALT 1725-1798

In London and Moscow, Volume 5d—­London to berlin
the memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

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

FLIGHT FROM LONDON TO BERLIN

CHAPTER XIV

Bottarelli—­A Letter from Pauline—­The Avenging Parrot—­Pocchini—­Guerra, the Venetian—­I Meet Sara Again; My Idea of Marrying Her and Settling in Switzerland—­The Hanoverians

Thus ended the first act of the comedy; the second began the next morning.  I was just getting up, when I heard a noise at the street door, and on putting my head out of the window I saw Pocchini, the scoundrel who had robbed me at Stuttgart trying to get into my house.  I cried out wrathfully that I would have nothing to do with him, and slammed down my window.

A little later Goudar put in an appearance.  He had got a copy of the St. James’s Chronicle, containing a brief report of my arrest, and of my being set a liberty under a bail of eighty guineas.  My name and the lady’s were disguised, but Rostaing and Bottarelli were set down plainly, and the editor praised their conduct.  I felt as if I should like to know Bottarelli, and begged Goudar to take me to him, and Martinelli, happening to call just then, said he would come with us.

We entered a wretched room on the third floor of a wretched house, and there we beheld a picture of the greatest misery.  A woman and five children clothed in rags formed the foreground, and in the background was Bottarelli, in an old dressing-gown, writing at a table worthy of Philemon and Baucis.  He rose as we came in, and the sight of him moved me to compassion.  I said,—­

“Do you know me, sir?”

“No, sir, I do not.”

“I am Casanova, against whom you bore false witness; whom you tried to cast into Newgate.”

“I am very sorry, but look around you and say what choice have I?  I have no bread to give my children.  I will do as much in your favour another time for nothing.”