The banks of the Brenta disappointed my hopes; they had remained more smiling in my imagination: the dykes raised along the canal conceal the marches too much. Several villas have been demolished; but a few very elegant ones still remain. There, perhaps, lives Signor Pococurante[74], whom the city ladies with their sonnets disgusted, to whom the two pretty girls began to grow very indifferent, to whom music grew tiresome after half an hour, who thought Homer mortally tedious, who detested the pious. Æneas, the boy Ascanius, the silly King Latinus, the ill-bred Amata and the insipid Lavinia, who saw nothing extraordinary in Horace' journey to Brundusium and his account of his bad dinner, who declared that he never read Tully and still less Milton, that barbarian who spoiled Tasso's hell and the devil. "'Alas!' said Candid softly to Martin, 'I am afraid this man holds our German poets in great contempt[75].'" In spite of my semi-disappointment and many gods in the little gardens, I was charmed with the mulberry-trees, the orange-trees, the fig-trees and the softness of the air, I who, such a short time before, was travelling through the fir-groves of Germany and over the mountains of the Czechs, where the sun looks ill. [Sidenote: I arrive in Venice.] I arrived on the 10th of September, at break of day, at Fusina, which Philippe de Comines[76] and Montaigne call "Chaffousine." At half past ten, I had landed in Venice. My first care was to send to the post-office: there was nothing addressed to me direct, nor indirectly to Paolo; of Madame la Duchesse de Berry, no news at all. I wrote to Count Griffi, the Neapolitan Minister in Florence, to ask him to let me know the movements of Her Royal Highness. Having everything in order, I resolved patiently to await the Princess: Satan sent me a temptation. I longed, at his diabolical suggestion, to stay alone, for a fortnight, at the Hôtel de l'Europe, to the detriment of the Legitimate Monarchy. I wished the august traveller bad roads, without reflecting that my restoration of King Henry V. might be delayed for half a month! Like Danton, I crave pardon for it of God and men. VENICE, HÔTEL DE L'EUROPE, 10 _September_ 1833. Salve, Italuni Regina.... . . . . . Nec tu semper eris[77]. O d'Italia dolente Eterno lumine.... Venezia[78]!