The exquisite acting of La Pallerini drew tears from my eyes:  it was indeed too horrible a subject for a Ballo, which in my opinion ought to end happily.  The scenery was the finest of the kind I think I ever witnessed.  The first scene represents the Circus maximus; the interior of the temple of Vesta and the place of execution outside the walls of Rome were most classically correct and appropriate:  the music was beyond all praise and singularly affecting.  This Ballet has excited such an enthusiastic approbation that Vigano the Ballet master, Pallerini who acts the Vestal and the young man who performs the hero of the piece were summoned every evening after the termination of the Ballet, to appear on the stage, and receive applauses, which seemed to increase at every representation.  I have been to see this ballet six or seven times, and always with increased delight.  I was there on the last night of its representation, when some amateurs and people connected with the theatre put in practice what appeared to mean ill-judged concetto, however well merited the compliment it meant to convey.  When the Vestal was about to descend into the vault, a genius with wings rose from it and repeated a few lines beginning Tu non morrai and telling her that the suffrages of the Insubrian people had decreed to her immortality, and printed sonnets were showered down on the stage from all parts of the house.  I think it would have been much better to let the piece finish in the usual way, and then at its termination call for La Pallerini to advance and receive the garlands and hommage so justly her due.

I was in the loge belonging to my friend Mme L-----; there were three or
four litterati with her, and they were all unanimous that it was an
absurd and pedantic concetto.

In a day or two I shall start from Milan for Munich thro’ Brescia and Verona and the Tyrol.

CHAPTER XVI

JULY-SEPTEMBER 1818

Innspruck—­Tyrol and the Tyrolese—­From Innspruck to Munich—­Monuments and churches—­Theatricals—­Journey from Munich to Vienna on a floss—­Trouble with a passport—­Complicated system of Austrian money—­Description of Vienna—­The Prater—­The theatres—­Schiller’s Joan of Arc—­A Kinderballet—­The young Napoleon at Schoenbrunn—­Journey from Vienna to Prague.

INNSPRUCK, 15th July.

I had engaged with a vetturino to convey me from Verona to Innspruck for four louis d’or and to be spesato.  A Roman gentleman and his lady were my fellow travellers; they were going to pass the summer months at a small campagne they possess in the Tyrol.  We stopped the first night at Roveredo.  The road from Verona to Roveredo is on the banks of the Adige (called in German the Etsch) in a narrow and deep valley, shut up on both sides by mountains, almost immediately on leaving Verona.