a
promenade; and that while they stopped us who were in the carriage to
examine our passports, she should walk direct to the inn where we were to
lodge, then write to the Consul of her nation to explain the business. She
followed my advice and passed unobserved and unmolested into Milan. On the
preceding evening at Castel-puster-lengo at supper I asked whether she
thought the rigour of the Austrian government was also the offspring of the
French Revolution. The Baroness had brought up her son in all these
feelings and particularly in a determined hatred of the Canton de Vaud; for
in the evening when we arrived at the inn and were sitting round the fire,
he would shake the burning faggots about and say: _Voila la ville de
Lausanne en cendres!_ If he grows up with these ideas and acts upon them,
he stands a good chance of being shot in a duel by some Vaudois. It is a
pity to see a child so spoiled, for he was a very fine boy, tho' very
violent in his temper which probably he inherited from his mother. Somebody
at the _pension Surpe_ at Milan who knew her told me that the Baroness was
of an aristocratic family and had married a rich _bourgeois_ of Bern whom
she treated rather too much _de haut en bas;_ in short that it was a
marriage quite _a la George Dandin_, till the poor man took it into his
head to die one day. At Turin we parted company, she for Genoa and I for
Lausanne.

_From Turin to Lausanne_.

I felt the cold very sensibly in the journey from Florence to Milan and
Turin. There is not a colder country in Europe than Lombardy in the winter.
The vicinity of the Alps contributes much to this; and the houses being
exceedingly large and having no stoves it is quite impossible that the
fireplaces can give heat sufficient to warm the rooms. I started from Turin
on the morning of the 9th December in the French diligence bound to Lyon,
but taking my place only as far as Chambery. In the diligence were a
Piedmontese Colonel who had served under Napoleon, and a young Scotchman, a
relation of Lord Minto. The latter was fond of excursions in ice and snow
and on our arrival at Suza he proposed to me to start from there two or
three hours before the diligence and to ascend Mont Cenis on foot as far as
the _Hospice_ and I was mad enough to accede to the proposal, for it
certainly was little less than madness in a person of my chilly habits and
susceptibility of cold and who had passed several years within the tropics
to scal