I have become acquainted with Lord Dillon[102] and his family, who are residing here and from whom I have received much civility. I met at his house the Marchese Giuliani, one of the adherents of King Joachim, a very amiable and clever man who speaks English fluently. Lord Dillon is a man of much reading and information and his conversation is at all times a great treat. His lady too is very amiable and accomplished. I went one day with a friend of mine to a pique-nique party at the Cascino, where a laughable adventure occurred perfectly in the stile of the novelle of Boccacio. As it is not the custom in Florence that husbands and wives should go together to places of public amusement, the lady is generally accompanied by her cavalier servente: but it by no means follows that the cavalier servente is the favored lover: one is often adopted as a cover to another who enjoys the peculiar favors of the lady. A gentleman who arrived at the hall where the supper table was laid out, somewhat earlier than the rest of the company and before the chamber was lighted, observed a gentleman and lady ascend the staircase, turn aside by a corridor and enter a chamber together. It was dark and he could not distinguish their persons. He waited fifteen or twenty minutes and observed them leave the chamber together, pass along the corridor and disappear. He had the curiosity to go into the chamber they had just left and found on the bed a lady's glove. He took up the glove and put it in his pocket, determined that this incident should afford him some amusement at supper and the company also by putting some fair one to the blush. Accordingly, when the supper was nearly over, he held up the glove and asked with a loud voice if any lady had lost a glove; when his own wife who was sitting at the same table at some distance from him called out with the utmost sangfroid: E il mio! dammelo: l'ho lasciato cadere. You may conceive what a laugh there was against him, for he had related the circumstances of his finding it to several of the company before they sat down to supper. This reminded me of an anecdote mentioned by Brantôme as having occurred at Milan in his time, a glove being in this case also the cause of the désagrément. A married lady had been much courted by a Spanish Cavalier of the name of Leon: one day, thinking he had made sure of her, he followed her into her bedroom, but met with a severe and decided repulse and was compelled to leave her re infectà. In his confusion he left one of his gloves on the bed which remained there unperceived by the lady. The husband of the lady arrived shortly afterwards and as he was aware of the attentions of the Spaniard to his wife and had noticed his going into the house, he went directly to his wife's chamber, where the first thing that captivated his attention was a man's military glove on the bed. He, however, said nothing, but from that moment abstained from all conjugal duty. The lady finding herself thus neglected by a husband who had been formerly tender and attentive, was at a loss to know the reason, and determined to come to an éclaircissement with him in as delicate a manner as she could. She therefore took a slip of paper, wrote the following lines thereon and placed it on his table:
Vigna era, vigna son;
Era podada, or più non son;
E non sò per qual cagion
Non mi poda il mio patron.[103]
The husband, on reading these lines, wrote the following in answer:
Vigna eri, vigna sei;
Eri podada, e più non sei;
Per la gran fa del Leon
Non ti poda il tuo patron.
The lady on reading these lines perceived at once the cause of her husband's estrangement and succeeded in explaining the matter satisfactorily to him, which was facilitated by the ingenuous declaration of Leon himself that he had tried to succeed but had been repulsed. The husband and wife being perfectly reconciled lived happily and no doubt the vine was cultivated as usual.
I left Florence the 27th November, and arrived at Turin 5th December. In an evil hour I engaged myself to accompany an old Swiss Baroness with whom I became acquainted at the Hotel of Mine Hembert to accompany her to Turin. She had with her her son, a fine boy of thirteen years of age but very much spoiled. We engaged a vetturino to conduct us to Turin, stopping one day at Milan. The Baroness did not speak Italian and generally sent for me to interpret for her when any disputes occurred between her and the people at the inns, and these disputes were tolerably frequent, as she always gave the servants wherever she stopped a good deal of trouble and on departing generally forgot to give them the buona grazia. I sometimes paid them for her myself in order to avoid noise and tumult; at other times we departed under vollies of abuse and imprecations such as brutta vecchia, maladetta carogna, and so forth. The Baroness had strong aristocratic prejudices and was a bitter enemy of the French Revolution to which she attributed collectively all the désagrémens she had experienced during life and all the inconveniences she met with during our present journey. The negligence and impertinence of the servants in Italy were invariably attributed by her to the revolutionary principle and she told me that the servants in her native canton Bern were the best in the world, but that even in them the French Revolution had made a great deal of difference and that they were not so submissive as they used to be. As she sent for me to be her dragoman in all her disputes on the road, you may conceive how glad I was to arrive at Turin to be rid of her. She put me in mind of Gabrina in the Orlando Furioso. We stopped one day at Milan but we were very near being detained two or three days at Fiacenza owing to an informality in the Baroness's passport, which had not been visé by the Austrian Legation at Florence. In vain she pleaded that she was told at the inn at Florence that such visa was not necessary; the police officer at the Austrian Douane, at a short distance beyond Piacenza, was inexorable and refused to viser her passport to allow her to proceed. She was in a sad dilemma and it was thought we should be obliged to remain at Piacenza. I however recommended her to be guided by me and not to talk with or scold anybody, and that I would ensure her arrival at Milan without difficulty, for I had observed that her scolding the officer at the Douane only served to make him more obstinate. I recommended her therefore that when we should arrive within sixty or seventy paces of the gate at Milan, she should get out of the carriage with her son and walk thro' the gate on foot with the utmost unconcern as if she belonged to the town and was returning from a promenade; and that while they stopped us who were in the carriage to examine our passports, she should walk direct to the inn where we were to lodge, then write to the Consul of her nation to explain the business. She followed my advice and passed unobserved and unmolested into Milan. On the preceding evening at Castel-puster-lengo at supper I asked whether she thought the rigour of the Austrian government was also the offspring of the French Revolution. The Baroness had brought up her son in all these feelings and particularly in a determined hatred of the Canton de Vaud; for in the evening when we arrived at the inn and were sitting round the fire, he would shake the burning faggots about and say: Voilà la ville de Lausanne en cendres! If he grows up with these ideas and acts upon them, he stands a good chance of being shot in a duel by some Vaudois. It is a pity to see a child so spoiled, for he was a very fine boy, tho' very violent in his temper which probably he inherited from his mother. Somebody at the pension Surpe at Milan who knew her told me that the Baroness was of an aristocratic family and had married a rich bourgeois of Bern whom she treated rather too much de haut en bas; in short that it was a marriage quite à la George Dandin, till the poor man took it into his head to die one day. At Turin we parted company, she for Genoa and I for Lausanne.
From Turin to Lausanne.
I felt the cold very sensibly in the journey from Florence to Milan and Turin. There is not a colder country in Europe than Lombardy in the winter. The vicinity of the Alps contributes much to this; and the houses being exceedingly large and having no stoves it is quite impossible that the fireplaces can give heat sufficient to warm the rooms. I started from Turin on the morning of the 9th December in the French diligence bound to Lyon, but taking my place only as far as Chambéry. In the diligence were a Piedmontese Colonel who had served under Napoleon, and a young Scotchman, a relation of Lord Minto. The latter was fond of excursions in ice and snow and on our arrival at Suza he proposed to me to start from there two or three hours before the diligence and to ascend Mont Cenis on foot as far as the Hospice and I was mad enough to accede to the proposal, for it certainly was little less than madness in a person of my chilly habits and susceptibility of cold and who had passed several years within the tropics to scale the Alps on foot in the middle of December and to walk 24 miles in snow and ice at one o'clock in the morning, which was the hour at which we started. I was well clad in flannel and I went thro' the journey valiantly and in high spirits and without suffering much from the cold till within five miles of the Hospice, when a heavy snow storm came on; it then began to look a little ugly and but for Napoleon's grand chaussès we were lost. We struggled on three miles further in the snow before we fell in with a maison de refuge. We knocked there and nobody answered. We then determined coûte que coûte to push on to the Hospice which we knew could not be more than two miles distant; indeed it was much more advisable so to do than to run the risk of being frozen by remaining two or three hours in the cold air till the diligence should come up. In standing still I began to feel the cold bitterly; so in spite of the snow storm, we pushed on and arrived at the inn at Mont-Cenis at five in the morning. We rubbed our hands and faces well with snow and took care not to approach the fire for several minutes, fortifying ourselves in the interim with a glass of brandy. We then had some coffee made and laid ourselves down to sleep by the side of an enormous fire until the diligence arrived, which made its appearance at eight o'clock. The passengers stopped to breakfast and the Scotchman proposed to me to make the descent of Lans-le-Bourg also on foot; but I was quite satisfied with the prowess I had already exhibited and declined the challenge. He however set off alone and thus performed the entire passage of Mont Cenis on foot. As for the rest of us we were carried down on a traineau; that is to say the diligence was unloaded and its wheels taken off; the baggage and wheels were put on one traineau and the diligence with the passengers in it on another, and in this manner we descended to Lans-le-Bourg. Nothing remarkable occurred on this journey and we arrived at Chambéry in good case. I hired a calèche to go to Geneva, remained there three days and arrived at Lausanne on the 18th December.
[100] Horace, Sat., II, 6, 65.—ED.
[101] Dante, Inferno, I, 33,29.—ED.