Nothing stops him, for he knows no fear and fears no suffering. To the end he has the courage to assert himself as voluptuously free and fickle. Now he is isolated from salon mirrors and intrigues, forgotten in games of chance and love, an adventurer without adventures, a stationary traveler. He treats himself to the ultimate, most desirable enjoyment, which, he believes, accompanies and justifies all other pleasures, the enjoyment of words. By an unexpected conjuring trick, just as the seducer's stage show seems over, here, in Dux, in Count Waldstein's castle, time suddenly ceases to run out.
Memory takes revenge on old age and exile, dispelling melancholy and society's persecutions.
As a final insolence, thumbing his nose, for the last time, at his contemporaries, at posterity, and at public morals, the Venetian revels in his reminiscences. Thirteen hours a day seem to go by like thirteen minutes, as he recounts his life to himself, as though he were not limited, as everyone else is, to living it only once. As the memoirist assembles, unifies, he becomes aware of his life. He accepts situating himself in the past and within a set period, as part of the flow and continuity of time. But now he knows that the passage of time is inescapable.