Giacomo Casanova 17, in 1742, with a degree in law ("for which I felt an unconquerable aversion"). His guardian's hope was that he would become an ecclesiastical lawyer. Casanova had also studied moral philosophy, chemistry, and mathematics, and was keenly interested in medicine. ("I should have been allowed to do as I wished and become a physician, in which profession quackery is even more effective than it is in legal practice.") He frequently prescribed his own treatments for himself and friends. While attending the university, Casanova began to gamble and quickly got into debt, causing his recall to Venice by his grandmother,
Giacomo Casanova his true father. Forced to resume his travels again, Casanova arrived in Paris, and in November 1783 met Benjamin Franklin while attending a presentation on aeronautics and the future of balloon transport. For a while, Casanova served as secretary and pamphleteer to Sebastian Foscarini, Venetian ambassador in Vienna. He also became acquainted with Lorenzo Da Ponte, Mozart's librettist, who noted about Casanova, "This singular man never liked to be in the wrong." Notes by Casanova indicate that he may have made suggestions to Da Ponte concerning the libretto for Mozart's "Don Giovanni". In 1785, after Foscarini died, Casanova began searching