A few leagues beyond Pontremoli the road is interrupted by a deep and rapid stream. There is a ford across this torrent. It had scarcely been indicated to me by my guides, beyond whom I had advanced, when I dashed into the water; but instead of guiding my horse to the right (as I ought to have done), I took the opposite direction. My guides, who saw my mistake, screamed out in Italian, "fermate, fermate!" which means, "stop, stop!" I thought it meant "firm, firm!" so I whipped and spurred my horse with all my might; he lost his footing, and I narrowly escaped drowning. When I reached the opposite shore my guides treated me with a sermon, which I dare say was very energetic, and in which the "Devil and the Frenchman" appeared to be the leading actors. I arrived on the **** at Lerici. I rejoiced when I saw the sea before me, when I saw the last obstacle which was interposed between the fulfilment of my hopes and the termination of my labours. But unhappily my joy was of short duration; in the course of the night I was attacked by an oppression on my chest, accompanied by a burning fever: this was the result of the cold bath which I had taken in the river. My mental sufferings were severe: I thought to myself, if I should be so unlucky as to get an inflammation on my lungs, what will become of me here without help, without friends, and in a strange land? Ah, my beloved country! ah, my dear mother! have I left you both, in order to perish in the arms of hirelings and of strangers! Have I only reached the long wished-for shores of Spezzia but to experience the grief of not being able to sail from them! Ah, if I could but have reached the Emperor, if I could but have spoken to him, if I could but have expired at his feet, then I should not have regretted life! My devoted attachment would have been known; my memory honoured; my name, linked to the destiny of the Emperor, would, perhaps, have descended with his unto posterity.... I sent for a doctor: by singular good fortune, the medical man who came to attend me was a retired army surgeon, a worthy man, and a great admirer of the French. When I was quite out of danger, he expressed a wish to know the motives which had induced me to cross the mountains to Lerici: and he gave me to understand that he guessed my views. A man who speaks is always liable to less suspicion than a man who says nothing; I therefore thought it right to allay the doctor's curiosity. After exhorting him to secrecy, and making a great mystery of the matter, I confessed that I was a Colonel in the French army, and that an officer who held a high rank in the service of Napoleon had married my sister. My sister, I proceeded to state, was so afflicted and broken down by the expatriation of her husband, that her medical attendants had declared her life to be in the greatest danger. My sister's illness, and the care of her four small children, prevented her from rejoining her husband; and therefore, in order to restore