Count Leopold Venosta received me with open arms. Painful as had been my separation from the friends of my childhood, still I was not insensible to the charm of being released from the chains of court etiquette, even though the chains which I had borne had been so light and easy. The air of liberty fanned my cheeks at every step I took; the peasants of Rhætia (who had now almost universally shaken off the fetters of their lordly masters) celebrated on all sides the feast of freedom, and invited the neighbouring inhabitants of the Valteline to participate in their happiness. Oh! what delightful scenes were these for a young and feeling heart!—and yet I had not sufficient experience to perceive their whole beauty and singularity.—Too often is liberty purchased dearly by the effusion of blood; and joy at obtaining the so long wished-for blessing is sullied by melancholy recollections of the means, by which that blessing was obtained. In _this_ instance, it was the reward of temperance and industry, which had at length succeeded in their efforts to burst the chains of luxury and oppression. Knights and Monks, the former owners of these possessions, had long indulged without reflection or restraint every caprice of their voluptuous fancies, till they became the debtors of their own vassals; who in the mean while had been advancing silently towards their grand object through diligence in labour and propriety in morals, and now were able to set at defiance those, whose slaves and victims they had been so long. The impoverished libertines found themselves without resource; they were obliged to rest contented with bestowing angry looks on their enfranchised vassals, as often as accident brought them in their way, and with indulging their spleen in intemperate railing at (what _they_ termed) the caprice of fortune. But Count Leopold belonged not to the number of these reduced Lords. His opulence grew with every day; his possessions were increased by the purchase of those, which the debts of his neighbours compelled them to dispose of. Neither had the country reason to lament, that so much power was concentrated in his hands. He allowed his vassals sufficient independence to prevent their sighing after a greater share of freedom; he parcelled out some of his estates into small farms, and bestowed them on the most industrious among his people; he even induced several of the inhabitants of the Valteline to settle upon his possessions, by allotting to them a portion of valuable but hitherto uncultivated land, which liberally replaced to them what little they abandoned in their own distracted country.