sung by the whole company, led by a Lithuanian called Zan, in a manner now triumphant and now mournful.  The beautiful ’Third of May’ song more particularly drew forth a positive uproar of enthusiasm.  Tears and shouts of joy grew into a terrible tumult; the excited men grouped themselves on the grass swearing eternal friendship in the most extravagant terms, for which the word ‘Oiczisna’ (Fatherland) provided the principal theme, until at last night threw her veil over this wild debauch.

That evening afterwards served me as the theme for an orchestral composition (in the form of an overture) named Polonia; I shall recount the fate of this work later on.  My friend Tyszkiewitcz’s passport now arrived, and he made up his mind to go back to Galicia via Brunn, although his friends considered it was very rash of him to do so.  I very much wanted to see something of the world, and Tyszkiewitcz’s offer to take me with him, induced my mother to consent to my going to Vienna, a place that I had long wished to visit.  I took with me the scores of my three overtures which had already been performed, and also that of my great symphony as yet unproduced, and had a grand time with my Polish patron, who took me in his luxurious travelling-coach as far as the capital of Moravia.  During a short stop at Dresden the exiles of all classes gave our beloved Count a friendly farewell dinner in Pirna, at which the champagne flowed freely, while the health was drunk of the future ‘Dictator of Poland.’

At last we separated at Brunn, from which place I continued my journey to Vienna by coach.  During the afternoon and night, which I was obliged to spend in Brunn by myself, I went through terrible agonies from fear of the cholera which, as I unexpectedly heard, had broken out in this place.  There I was all alone in a strange place, my faithful friend just departed, and on hearing of the epidemic I felt as if a malicious demon had caught me in his snare in order to annihilate me.  I did not betray my terror to the people in the hotel, but when I was shown into a very lonely wing of the house and left by myself in this wilderness, I hid myself in bed with my clothes on, and lived once again through all the horrors of ghost stories as I had done in my boyhood.  The cholera stood before me like a living thing; I could see and touch it; it lay in my bed and embraced me.  My limbs turned to ice, I felt frozen to the very marrow.  Whether I was awake or asleep I never knew; I only remember how astonished I was when, on awakening, I felt thoroughly well and healthy.

At last I arrived in Vienna, where I escaped the epidemic which had penetrated as far as that town.  It was midsummer of the year 1832.  Owing to the introductions I had with me, I found myself very much at home in this lively city, in which I made a pleasant stay of six weeks.  As my sojourn, however, had no really practical purpose, my mother looked upon the cost of this holiday, short as it seemed, as an