The author of these letters might be said to have been Casanova’s final conquest.

In the winter of 1797, the seventy-two year old Casanova had retired to become the Count von Waldstein’s librarian when a letter from the daughter of a former friend inaugurated a unique correspondence. Cécile de Roggendorff, fifty years his junior, a penniless countess who had lost her fiancé to war, sought a friend and confidant, and in the renowned libertine found a legend she could love. Between the young lady’s impassioned lines can be read the unexpected replies, now unfortunately lost, of a Casanova no longer playing the seducer, but the almost paternal part of the gentleman counselor, advising patience and dispensing wisdom.

The sparkling epistles, originally written in French—his German was as poor as her Italian—give a glimpse of a far too brief platonic and philosophical relationship that ended with de Roggendorf’s untimely death. Spanning little more than a year, they vividly portray the vivacious wit and burgeoning intellect of a young lady of the eighteenth century, whose bright future was cut tragically short. Collected for the first time, they constitute a unique historical document and a true story of love.