Giacomo Casanova but the gambling habit became firmly established. Back in Venice, Casanova started his clerical law career and was admitted as an" abbé" after being conferred minor orders by the Patriarch of Venice. He shuttled back and forth to Padua to continue his university studies. By now, he had become something of a dandy—tall and dark, his long hair powdered, scented, and elaborately curled. He quickly ingratiated himself with a patron (something he was to do all his life), 76-year-old Venetian senator Alvise Gasparo Malipiero, the owner of Palazzo Malipiero, close to Casanova's home in Venice. Malipiero moved in the best
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