THE EDUCATION OF THE YOUNG CASANOVA

Venice, 1798

After the tragedy that affected his family in 1743 almost bringing it to rack and ruin, my Lord Giacomo Casanova, not yet twenty years old at the time, was closed in the Fort of Sant'Andrea for several months with the aim of improving his behavior and attitudes, as he had already shown the first signs of that temper of his that would over time cause him joys and pains well known to posterity.

However, it was precisely that year that he passed between imprisonment and forced coexistence with his mother that gave shape to the greatest lover of all times. In fact, he delighted in conquering his earliest young preys, such as the daughter of the baker, and girls who ran away from home, and several slaves abducted from their Masters, while the most important woman of this phase of his life does not appear in any diary.

She was a woman much older than himself, with a beautiful and aristocratic appearance, whose name we do not know, but whom, by giving credit to some particularly reliable sources, we will simply call "Red Duchess", avoiding too explicit references to what could to be the true identity of the woman who had the merit, not so much of seducing as of educating in the art of love, none other than the young Casanova.

May this story bring back to life, in those who read its revelations, the same effects that so deeply perturbed my Lord.  

Rocco

Faithful servant of the knight of Seingalt