there would be very pleasant.  I told Karl Ritter, who was at Lausanne, of my intention of going to Italy, and to my surprise he wrote saying that he also intended to give up his home and go to Italy alone, as his wife was going to Saxony for the winter on account of family affairs.  He offered himself as my travelling companion.  This suited me excellently, and as Ritter also assured me that he knew, from a previous visit, that the climate of Venice was quite agreeable at this season, I was induced to make a hasty departure.  I had, however, to arrange about my passport.  I expected that the embassies in Berne would corroborate the fact that as a political refugee I should have nothing to fear in Venice, which, although belonging to Austria, did not form part of the German Confederation.  Liszt, to whom I also applied for information on this point, advised me on no account to go to Venice; on the other hand, the report that some of my friends in Berne obtained from the Austrian ambassador pronounced it as quite safe; so, after barely a week’s stay in Geneva, I informed Karl Ritter of my readiness to start, and called for him at his villa in Lausanne, so that we might begin the journey together.

We did not talk much on the way, but gave ourselves up silently to our impressions.  The route was over the Simplon to Lake Maggiore, where I again visited the Borromean Islands from Baveno.  There, on the terrace garden of Isola Bella, I spent a wonderful late summer morning in the company of my young friend, who was never obtrusive, but, on the contrary, inclined to be too silent.  For the first time I felt my mind entirely at rest, and filled with the hope of a new and harmonious future.  We continued our journey by coach through Sesto Calende to Milan; and Karl was filled with such a longing for his beloved Venice, that he could barely grant me time to admire the famous Duomo; but I had no objection to being hurried with this object in view.  As we were looking from the railway dike at Venice rising before us from the mirror of water, Karl lost his hat out of the carriage owing to an enthusiastic movement of delight; I thought that I must follow suit, so I too threw my hat out; consequently we arrived in Venice bareheaded, and immediately got into a gondola to go down the Grand Canal as far as the Piazzetta near San Marco.  The weather had suddenly become gloomy, and the aspect of the gondolas quite shocked me; for, in spite of what I had heard about these peculiar vessels draped in black, the sight of one was an unpleasant surprise:  when I had to go under the black awning, I could not help remembering the cholera-scare some time earlier.  I certainly felt I was taking part in a funeral procession during a pestilence.  Karl assured me that every one felt the same at first, but that one soon got accustomed to it.  Next came the long sail through the twists and turns of the Grand Canal.  The impression that everything made on me here did not tend to dispel