there (page 60) how on Christmas Day, 1759, Casanova receives a letter
from Manon in Paris, announcing her marriage with 'M. Blondel, architect
to the King, and member of his Academy'; she returns him his letters, and
begs him to return hers, or burn them. Instead of doing so he allows
Esther to read them, intending to burn them afterwards. Esther begs to be
allowed to keep the letters, promising to 'preserve them religiously all
her life.' 'These letters,' he says, 'numbered more than two hundred, and
the shortest were of four pages: Certainly there are not two hundred of
them at Dux, but it seems to me highly probable that Casanova made a
final selection from Manon's letters, and that it is these which I have
found.

But, however this may be, I was fortunate enough to find the set of
letters which I was most anxious to find the letters from Henriette,
whose loss every writer on Casanova has lamented. Henriette, it will be
remembered, makes her first appearance at Cesena, in the year 1748; after
their meeting at Geneva, she reappears, romantically 'a propos',
twenty-two years later, at Aix in Provence; and she writes to Casanova
proposing 'un commerce epistolaire', asking him what he has done since
his escape from prison, and promising to do her best to tell him all that
has happened to her during the long interval. After quoting her letter,
he adds: 'I replied to her, accepting the correspondence that she offered
me, and telling her briefly all my vicissitudes. She related to me in
turn, in some forty letters, all the history of her life. If she dies
before me, I shall add these letters to these Memoirs; but to-day she is
still alive, and always happy, though now old.' It has never been known
what became of these letters, and why they were not added to the Memoirs.
I have found a great quantity of them, some signed with her married name
in full, 'Henriette de Schnetzmann,' and I am inclined to think that she
survived Casanova, for one of the letters is dated Bayreuth, 1798, the