“I have not time to finish, but if the Concert Society will perform the piece in the absence of the composer, I beg that Habeneck will double the flute passage at the last entry of the theme, and will write the following chords for full orchestra. That will be sufficient finale,” threw it into a valise with a few clothes, loaded my pistols, put into my pockets two little bottles, one of strychnine, the other of laudanum; then, conscience-clear with regard to my arsenal, spent the rest of the time raging up and down the streets of Florence like a mad dog. At five, I went back to the shop to try on my clothes, which were satisfactory, and with the modiste’s “good wishes for the success of my little comedy,” I went back to say good-bye to Schlick, who looked upon me as a lost sheep returning to the fold! A farewell glance at Cellini’s _Perseus_, and we were off. League after league went by and I sat with clenched teeth. I could neither eat nor speak. About midnight the driver and I exchanged a few words about my pistols, he remarking that, if brigands attacked us, we must on no account attempt to defend ourselves, proceeded to take off the caps and hide them under the cushions. “As you like,” I said, indifferently. “I have no wish to compromise you.” On our arrival at Genoa (I having tasted nothing but the juice of an orange, to the astonishment of the courier, who could not make out whether I belonged to this world or the next), I found that, in changing carriages at Pietra Santa, my finery had been left behind. “Confound it all!” I thought; “this looks as if some cursed good angel stood in the way of my plan.” Again I hunted up a dressmaker, and after trying three, succeeded in getting a new outfit. Meanwhile, the Sardinian people, seeing me trotting after work-girls like this, took it into their sapient heads that I must be a conspirator, a _carbonero_, a liberator, and refused to _viser_ my passport for Turin. I must go by Nice. “Then, for heaven’s sake, _viser_ it for Nice. I don’t care. I’ll go _viâ_ the infernal regions so long as I get through.” Which was the greater fool--the policeman, who saw in every Frenchman an emissary of the Revolution, or myself, who thought I could not set foot in Paris undisguised; forgetting that, by hiding for a day in a hotel, I could have found fifty women to rig me out perfectly? Self-engrossed people are really delightful. They fancy everyone is thinking about them, and the deadly earnest with which they act up to the idea is simply delicious! So, behold me on my way to Nice, going over and over my little Parisian drama.