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_.