but it was all one: still strapped he his inexorable razor, humming out a song of _Bravura_, the subject of which was the castration of the devil by a baker; (which, by the bye, is a very curious story, whose authenticity I must enquire into farther at my leisure.) I immediately augured my approaching destiny from the burden of this song; and the _Cornuto_ presently gave me to understand that my conjecture was well founded. Having been till now in a cold-sweat, and corporal fear of my life, I congratulated myself on this exchange of punishment, as a sort of reprieve, and considering that I had some time since resolved, like another _Grassetto_, to undergo the operation whenever I found myself bold enough for such a voluntary sacrifice; I plucked up courage, and with great composure told the barber, that a guilty conscience was a greater torment to me than any he could devise; but that to expiate the crime I had committed, and appease the anger of heaven, and the honest man whom I had so deeply offended, I would patiently submit to suffer the righteous sentence which his vengeance meditated on the peccant part. The enraged tonsor took me at my word. * * * * * The first thing that came into my thoughts after I awoke from the fainting fit, into which the paroxism of pain had thrown me, was to try my voice in its improved state. I accordingly sung _A Dawn of Hope my Soul revives_, and found my powers wonderfully improved, and my execution delicate, interesting, and full of effects. “Ho, ho,” cries the barber, “I am glad to find you are so merry,” and resumed his old tune of the baker and the devil. I told him I thought it unkind in him to insult me, and intreated him to convey me home, which he very readily consented to do, and soon afterwards began to apologize for the effects of his rage, hoping I would consider the nature of the provocation, and not attempt to take the law of him. I answered, that upon condition he would freely pardon his wife, whose fault was venial, as her virtue had fallen a sacrifice to the power of harmony, I would decline any hostile proceedings against him on my own account, with which condition he appeared satisfied, and we parted.—I was brought home on a mule, on which I rode sideways; and as soon as I alighted at Signor _Manselli_’s I sent for him into my chamber, and accosted him as he approached with the following air, in singing which I exerted all my newly-acquired powers. _Bear, O bear me on a sudden, Some kind stroke of smiling chance! From this land of beef and pudding, To dear_ Italy _or_ France! _I am sick to the soul, Politics and sea coal, So give one the vapours, Their cursed news-papers, Their mobbing, Stock-jobbing Are horrors to me; I wish the whole island were sunk in the sea._