No sooner did I reach the end of my expedition than I had to think of returning; so, without taking any rest, I started on horseback from Alghiero to Sassari, the second capital of the island, from which a diligence, lately established, was to bring me here, where there is, in port, a steamboat for Genoa. But, as the weather is bad here I must stay for two days.
From Sassari to Cagliari I came through the whole of Sardinia, through the middle of it. It is alike everywhere. There is one district where the inhabitants make a horrible bread by pounding acorns of the live-oak to flour and mixing it with clay, and this within sight of beautiful Italy! Men and women go naked with a strip of linen, a tattered rag, to cover their nudity. I saw masses of human beings trooped in the sun along the walls of their hovels, for Easter-day. No habitation has a chimney; they make their fires in the middle of the huts, which are draped with soot. The women spend their days in pounding the acorns and kneading the bread; the men tend the goats and the cattle; the soil is untilled in this, the most fertile spot on earth! In the midst of this utter and incurable misery there are villages which have costumes of amazing richness.
Genoa, April 22.
Now I can tell you the object of my journey. I have been both right and wrong. Last year, at this time, in Genoa, a merchant told me that the careless neglect of Sardinia was so great that there were, in a certain locality, disused silver mines with mountains of scoriæ containing refuse lead from which the silver had been taken. At once, I told him to send me specimens of these scoriæ to Paris, and that after assaying them I would return and get a permit in Turin to work those mines with him. A year passed, and the man sent me nothing.
Here is my reasoning: The Romans and the metallurgists of the middle ages were so ignorant of docimasy that these scoriæ must, necessarily, still contain a great amount of silver. Now, a friend of Borget, a great chemist, possesses a secret by which to extract gold and silver in whatever way and in whatever proportion they are mixed with other material, at no great cost. By this means I could get all the silver from these scoriæ.
While I was waiting and expecting the specimens, my Genoese merchant obtained for himself the right to work the mine; and, while I was inventing my ingenious deduction, a Marseille firm went to Cagliari, assayed the lead and the scoriæ, and petitioned, in rivalry with the Genoese, for a permit in Turin. An assayer from Marseille, who was taken to the spot, found that the scoriæ gave ten per cent of lead, and the lead ten per cent of silver by the ordinary methods. So my conjectures were well-founded; but I had the misfortune not to act promptly enough. On the other hand, misled by local information, I rode to the Argentara, another abandoned mine, situated in the wildest part of the island, and I brought away specimens of mineral. Perhaps chance may serve me better than the reasonings of intellect.
I am detained here by the refusal of the Austrian consul to viser my passport for Milan, where I must go before returning to Paris, to get some money. I will send you my letter from there, which is in the Austrian dominions, and time will be saved in its going to Brody.
I thought I should only be a month on this trip, and I shall have been from forty-five to fifty days. I do not surfer less in my affairs than in my habits by such a break. It is now fifty days since I had news of you! And my poor house which is building! Grant it be finished, and that I may be able to regain time lost. I must do three works at once without unharnessing.
Adieu, cara. If you have seen Genoa you know how dull the life is here. I shall go to work on my comedy. Do not scold me too much when you answer this letter about my journey, for the vanquished should be consoled. I have thought often of you during my adventurous trip; and I imagined that M. Hanski was saying more than once, "What the devil is he doing in that galley?"
À propos, the statue from Milan has been received in Paris [Puttinati's statue], and is thought bad; so I shall not insist on sending you a copy; you have enough of me on Boulanger's canvas.