I attended a _funzione_ in honor of the Archduke, and found it very entertaining. He was given a serenade from the Piazzetta to the iron bridge. Six hundred gondolas followed the colossal boat containing the music. Every one carried lanterns, and many burned red or blue Bengal lights, which threw on the palaces of the Grand Canal tints of fairy-like hue. The passage of the Rialto was extremely amusing. No one could turn around or withdraw from his place, and the result was that for an hour and a quarter the entire space between the Loredan palace and the Rialto was an immovable bridge. The instant a crevice as wide as one’s hand appeared between two sterns a prow slipped into it like a coin. Every instant was heard the cracking of planks, and now and then the cracking of an oar. It is most extraordinary that in all this throng, which, in France would be the occasion of a free-for-all scrimmage, not an oath was heard, not even a word of ill-humour. These people are a compound of milk and maize. I saw yesterday, in Saint-Mark’s Place, a monk fall on his knees before an Austrian corporal who obstructed his way. I have never seen anything so distressing, and in full view of the Lion of Saint-Mark, too! I am waiting here for Panizzi. I go in society sometimes. I visit the libraries and spend my time in a tolerably agreeable way. I saw yesterday the Armenians, and very handsome chaps they are, whom the mere sight of a senator transformed into Armenians from Constantinople. They presented me with an epic poem by one of their Fathers. Good-bye. I shall reach Genoa, probably, the 1st of September, and Paris certainly in October. I shall go to Vienna as soon as I have heard from you. For the last few days I have been fairly well, but for more than a fortnight I was miserably ill. Good-bye again. CLXXXI GENOA, _September 10, 1858_. On my arrival here I found your letter of the 1st, which I acknowledge gratefully. You make no mention of one which I wrote you from Brescia about the first of this month. In it I said that I had left Venice with regret, and that I was thinking of you constantly. Lake Como was charming. I stopped at Bellagio. In a little villa by the lake shore I found Madame Pasta, whom I had not seen since the days of her triumphs in the Italian Opera. She has increased singularly in width. She is now cultivating her cabbages, and says she is as happy as when we used to throw crowns and sonnets to her. We talked of music, the drama, and she said something that struck me as very true, which was that since Rossini no one had written an opera of any unity, of which all the parts held together. All that Verdi and his associates have done resembles a harlequin’s costume.