the idea that their owner was a magician.
During the same month with the two preceding
occurrences, another sinister event befel. An
old lady, named Memmo, the mother of three
young men with whom Casanova was intimate,
took it into her head that he was perverting
them by atheistic doctrines, and made a
complaint against him, which came secretly before
the Red Inquisitor of State, Antonio
Condulmer, a friend of the Abbé Chiari, who,
listening to the accusation, treasured it for
future use. At last the blow fell. In the month
of July, 1755, the tribunal gave orders to
Messer Grande (the officer who executed its
decrees) to secure Casanova, according to the
usual formula, "dead or alive."

There was a friend of Casanova—a lady with
whom his relations were most intimate—and a
few days before the festival of St. James, his
patron saint, she made him a present of several
yards of silver lace to ornament a new taffeta
coat which he was to wear on the vigil of the
festival. He accordingly went to see her in his
gay costume, promising, when he took leave, to
return next day, as he was greatly in want of
money, and wished to borrow five hundred
sequins. Feeling sure of obtaining this money,
he passed the intervening night at the gaming-
table, where he lost on parole the exact sum he
meant to have borrowed. He then withdrew
to his own house, and, supposing that the
servants were still in bed, took out his key to let
himself in; but, to his great surprise, he found
the street door open, and the lock broken.
Entering hastily to see what was the matter, he
found everybody up, and the landlady uttering
loud lamentations. Messer Grande, she said,
accompanied by a band of sbirri, had, a short
time before, made a forcible entry, and turned
everything topsy-turvy, saying that they were in
search of a trunk full of salt, an article that was
strictly contraband. On the 26th of July, 1755,
Casanova was arrested at his lodgings.

My desk was open, he writes, and all my
papers were lying on the table. I told Messer
Grande to take them. They were numerous
enough to fill a bag, which he gave to a sbirro,
and then told me to deliver up the manuscripts
which were bound in volumes. This opened my
eyes to the fact of my having been betrayed by
Manuzzi. I pointed out the books, and Messer
Grande took possession of them, as well as of
some volumes of Petrarch, Ariosto, Horace, and
others. While he was looking over the books
I mechanically went through my toilette, and
put on a laced shirt and my best coat without
saying a word, my captor keeping his eyes upon
me all the time, and not seeming to think it at
all extraordinary that I should dress myself as
if I had been going to a wedding. In the ante-
chamber I found no fewer than forty archers,
who escorted me to the canal, where Messer
Grande made me enter a gondola, in which he
seated himself together with four of his men.
I was conducted to his house, coffee was offered
me which I refused, and I was then removed to
an upper room, where I slept for four hours, at
the end of which time an archer entered and
informed me that he had orders to take me "Under
the Leads." Without a word I followed him.
We descended to the gondola and took our course
towards the quay of the Prisons. Landing, we
entered the building opposite, ascended several
flights of stairs, and then crossed the closed
bridge which communicates from the prisons to
the ducal palace above the canal called Rio di
Palazzo. Beyond this bridge we passed through
a gallery and two chambers, in the last of which
the archer presented me to a personage wearing
a patrician's robe, who, after measuring me from,
head to foot, exclaimed, "E quello, mettetelo in
deposito." (It is he; put him in his cell.)
This man was the secretary of the Inquisitors,
Dominico Cavalli. I was then given in charge
of the Keeper of the Leads, who stood by, with
an enormous bunch of keys hanging to his girdle,
and who, followed by two archers, took me up
two narrow staircases opening on a gallery, along
which we proceeded, then through a second
gallery separated from the first by a door, which
he unlocked, and finally through a third, at the
farther extremity of which he opened another
door that gave admission to a dirty attic, eighteen
feet long and six wide, and badly lighted by a
small window in the roof. I supposed that this
attic was my prison, but I was mistaken, for,
selecting a ponderous key from the bunch, the
jailer opened a thick iron-bound door, three
feet and a half high, and having in the middle a
round hole, cross-barred, some eight inches in
diameter. He signed to me to enter the cell,
which I could only do by stooping; he then
turned the key upon me, and asked me through
the hole in the door what I should like to have
to eat?

"I have not thought about it," I replied, and
I heard him leave the attic, locking the door
after him. Overwhelmed and stupified by my
misfortune, I rested with my elbows on the sill
of the grated window of my dungeon. It was
two feet square, and crossed by six bars of iron,
each an inch thick, thus forming sixteen square
holes for the admission of light, which, however,
was prevented from entering freely from the
attic window by a large heavy quadrangular
beam that supported the ceiling, and intercepted
the rays. After a while, I groped round my
cell, which was only five and a half feet high and
six feet square, one side being a sort of alcove,
capable of holding a bed; but neither bed, table,
chair, nor any kind of furniture was there, only
a tub for slops, and a sort of shelf about four
feet from the floor. Upon this ledge I placed
my silk cloak, my fine coat, and my new hat,
bordered with Spanish point-lace, and decorated
with a flowing white feather. The heat was
extreme, and mechanically I turned to my grating,
the only place for me to rest, leaning on my
elbows. I could not see the attic window, but
by the dim light I perceived rats of enormous
size running about in all directions; these
creatures, the sight of which I always detested,
coming fearlessly beneath my grating. At this
disgusting sight I turned hastily away, and