Giacomo Casanova most famous and representative citizen. Casanova was cared for by his grandmother Marzia Baldissera while his mother toured about Europe in the theater. His father died when he was eight. As a child, Casanova suffered nosebleeds, and his grandmother sought help from a witch: "Leaving the gondola, we enter a hovel, where we find an old woman sitting on a pallet, with a black cat in her arms and five or six others around her." Though the unguent applied was ineffective, Casanova was fascinated by the incantation. Perhaps to remedy the nosebleeds (a physician blamed the density of Venice's air),
Giacomo Casanova was in her thirteenth year. She had nowhere the definitive mark of puberty." (III, 196–7; X, 116–17). In 1774, when he was almost fifty, Casanova encountered in Trieste a former lover, the actress Irene, now accompanied by her nine-year-old daughter. "A few days later she came, with her daughter, who pleased me ("qui me plut") and who did not reject my caresses. One fine day, she met with Baron Pittoni, who loved little girls as much as I did ("aimant autant que moi les petites filles"), and took a liking to Irene’s girl, and asked the mother to do him