Of course, any one who'd bothered to read Casanova's autobiography would have decided to take it all with a heavy dose of salt. The descriptions of nuns and duchesses (all of whom had wonderful orbs and had to be approached through convoluted canals of intrigue) should have ticked any sane reader off to their doubtful validity.
But no, we needed these wet blankets to come and elucidate the obvious. Casanova, who translated the Iliad to Italian (or was it Venetian in those days?) and invented the national lottery (for the French) could not have been a mental light-weight. But he sure was boastful, as can be gleaned from a reading either of his amorous conquests or of the account of his escape from the Italian dungeons. It turns out that like many of the truly gifted, he was boastful not about his real talents but about the sexual exploits that he knew were just a capricious gift of fate.
There are superstitious people who will tell you that to boast about something is to risk losing it forever. Casanova, with such thoughts firmly in mind, was boasting about the things he could afford to lose.
