"Monsieur le gouverneur, you are suggesting a difficult thing to me. You know Madame la Duchesse de Berry; she is not a woman to be led as one pleases: if she has made up her mind, nothing will make her change it. Who knows? Perhaps it suits her to be arrested by the Emperor of Austria, her uncle[236], even as she was put in gaol by Louis-Philippe, her uncle! The legitimate kings and the illegitimate kings will be acting alike; Louis-Philippe will have dethroned the son of Henry IV., Francis II. will prevent the meeting of mother and son; M. le Prince de Metternich will relieve M. le Général Bugeaud at his post: that will be perfect!" The Governor was beside himself: "Ah, viscount, how right you are! That propaganda, why, it's everywhere! That youth no longer pays any attention to us! Not even so much in the Venetian States as in Lombardy and Piedmont!" "And the Papal States!" I exclaimed. "And Naples! And Sicily! And the banks of the Rhine! And the whole world!" "Ah, ah, ah!" cried the Governor. "We can't remain like this, always sword in hand, with an army under arms, without fighting. France and England an example to our peoples! A Young Italy now, after the _Carbonari!_ Young Italy! Who ever heard of such a thing?" "Monsieur," I said, "I will make every effort to persuade Madame to give you a few days; you must be so good as to grant me a passport: that concession alone can prevent Her Royal Highness from following her first resolve." [Sidenote: The Deputy of Padua.] "I will take it upon myself," said the reassured Governor, "to allow Madame to pass through Venice on her way to Trieste; if she loiters a little along the roads, she will reach the latter town at just the same time as the orders which you are going to fetch, and we shall be saved. The Deputy of Padua will give you your _visa_ for Prague, in exchange for which you will leave a letter declaring Her Royal Highness' resolve not to go beyond Trieste. What a time! What a time! I congratulate myself upon being an old man, my dear and illustrious viscount, so that I cannot see what is going to happen."