thought we should be obliged to remain at Piacenza.  I however recommended her to be guided by me and not to talk with or scold anybody, and that I would ensure her arrival at Milan without difficulty, for I had observed that her scolding the officer at the Douane only served to make him more obstinate.  I recommended her therefore that when we should arrive within sixty or seventy paces of the gate at Milan, she should get out of the carriage with her son and walk thro’ the gate on foot with the utmost unconcern as if she belonged to the town and was returning from 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