Racy Memoir For the French National Library.

The French National Library has bought itself a belated valentine in the form of manuscript pages by the hand of the world's most famous lover, Giacomo Casanova, Reuters reported. The 3,700-page purchase includes Casanova's memoir, ''L'Histoire de Ma Vie'' (''The Story of My Life''), below, which was thought to have been destroyed at the end of World War II; it was discovered in boxes that had been transferred to a bank safe in Leipzig, Germany, in 1945 a few days before Allied bombing raids. The library paid more than $9 million for the pages, which were being sold by the heirs of a German publisher who had acquired them in the 19th century. ''They were in good shape,'' Marie-Laure Prevost, curator of the Bibliotheque Nationale de France, told Reuters TV. The work is expected to be exhibited in 2011. Casanova began documenting his sexual exploits in 1789 while working as a librarian, and continued to revise his stories until he died in 1798. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]