On the 1st of May he sent me to Bologna to be under the famous Count Mattei for my complaint; the journey occupied eleven hours. I took my niece Blanche. We found that he had gone to Riola, two hours' rail from Bologna, so we went on there to a _pension Suisse_, called Hôtel della Rosa. The train runs along the Reno river. The Hôtel Rosa holds about twenty patients, and was kept by Monsieur and Madame Schmidt; she was his right-hand agent, was initiated in all his business, and superintended all his patients. Now she works on her own account in London and other capitals. It is a lovely mountain place, this castle perched on a high crag about half an hour's scramble above the pension. Count Mattei has restored the castle, I think, of Savignano. There was nothing left but a little tower on the raw rock, and he has constructed the most solid, handsome, fantastic, eccentric castle possible to conceive, of stone and marble, regardless of expense, for he is the Monte-Cristo of the country. [Sidenote: _Count Mattei_.] Having dropped my bag and secured a room at the pension, I climbed up there. First I had to conciliate a very doubtful-looking mastiff; then appeared a tall, robust, well-made, soldier-like looking form in English costume of blue serge, brigand felt hat, with a long pipe, who looked about fifty, and not at all like a doctor. He received me very kindly, and took me up flights of stairs, through courts, into a wainscoted oak room, with fruits and sweets on the table, with barred iron gates and drawbridges and chains in different parts of the room, that looked as if he could pull one up and pop one down into a hole. He talked French and Italian, but I soon perceived that he liked Italian best, and stuck to it; and I also noticed that, by his mouth and eyes, instead of fifty, he must be about seventy-five. A sumptuous dinner-table was laid out in an adjoining room, with fruit and flowers. I told him I could not be content, having come so far to see him, to have only a passing quarter of an hour. He listened to my long complaints about my health most patiently, asked me every question, but he did not ask to examine me, nor look at my tongue, nor feel my pulse, as other doctors do, but said that I did not look like a person with the complaint mentioned, but as if circulation and nerves were out of order. He prescribed four internal and four external remedies, and baths. I wrote down all his suggestions, and rehearsed it, that he might correct any mistakes; and then asked him of his remedies for gout.