Casanovade Seingalt

Casanova de Seingalt, Giovanni Giacomo (1725-1798), a celebrated Italian adventurer, born in Venice, the son of an actor and actress, studied at Padua, and gave evidence of great and precocious intelligence. His escapades soon made Padua too hot for him, and he entered upon a life of adventure which led him to many parts of Europe. In 1755 he was confined in the Piombi of Venice, and his daring escape the next year made his reputation throughout Europe, and he was acquainted with Frederick the Great, Catherine II., Suwarroff, Rousseau, Voltaire, Louis XV., and Mme. de Pompadour. Later he was banished from Warsaw for a duel, from Paris and from Madrid for other causes, and still later, recognising that a new and more serious era had set in, became the librarian of a "prince without a library" - Count Waldstein of Bohemia - and composed his Memoires, a book of cynical confessions, entertaining, but not fitted for general reading by reason of their licentiousness. He has been called the wandering Jew of vice, and a "fille de joie faite homme."