Disguised as the Countess de M.’s lady’s-maid, I would go to the house about nine o’clock with an important letter. While it was being read, I would pull out my double-barrelled pistols, kill number one and number two, seize number three by the hair and finish her off likewise; after which, if this vocal and instrumental concert had gathered an audience, I would turn the fourth barrel upon myself. Should it miss fire (such things happen occasionally), I had a final resource in my little bottles. Grand climax! It seems rather a pity it never came off. Now, despite my rage, I began to say: “Yes, it will be most agreeable, but--to have to kill myself too, is distinctly annoying. To say farewell to earth, to art; to leave behind me only the reputation of a churl, who did not understand the gentle art of living; to leave my symphony unfinished, the scores unwritten--those glorious scores that float through my brain.... Ah!” “But no; they shall, they must all die!” Each minute I drew nearer to France. That night, on the Cornice road, love of life and love of art whispered sweet promises of days to come, and I sat listening, vaguely, dreamily, when the driver stopped to put on the drag. Roused mentally by the thunder of the waves upon the iron cliffs below, the stupendous majesty of Nature burst upon me with greater force than ever before, and woke anew the tempest in my heart--the awful wrestling of Life and Death. Holding with both hands on to my seat, I let out a wild “Ha!” so hoarse, so savage, so diabolic that the startled driver bounced aside as if he had indeed had a demon for his fellow-traveller. In my first lucid moments I remember thinking, “If only I could find some solid point of rock to cling to before the next wave of fury and madness sweeps over my head, I might yet be saved!” I found one. We stopped to change horses at a little Sardinian village--Ventimiglia, I believe[11]--and, begging five minutes from the guard, I hurried into a café, seized a scrap of paper, and wrote to M. Vernet, praying him to keep me on the roll of students, if I were not already crossed off, assuring him that I had not yet broken the rule, and promising not to cross the frontier until I received his answer at Nice, where I would await it. Temporarily safeguarded by my word of honour, yet free to take up my Red Indian scheme of vengeance again, should I be excluded from the Academy, I got quietly into the carriage and suddenly discovered that ... I was hungry, having eaten nothing since leaving Florence. Oh, good, gross Nature! I was positively reviving! I got to Nice, still growling at intervals; but, after a few days came M. Vernet’s answer--a friendly paternal letter that touched me deeply.