The Baroness Had Strong Aristocratic Prejudices And Was A Bitter Enemy Of The French Revolution To Which She Attributed Collectively All The Desagremens She Had Experienced During Life And All The Inconveniences She Met With During Our Present Journey.

The negligence and impertinence of the servants in Italy were invariably attributed by her to the revolutionary principle and

She told me that the servants in her native canton Bern were the best in the world, but that even in them the French Revolution had made a great deal of difference and that they were not so submissive as they used to be. As she sent for me to be her dragoman in all her disputes on the road, you may conceive how glad I was to arrive at Turin to be rid of her. She put me in mind of Gabrina in the Orlando Furioso. We stopped one day at Milan but we were very near being detained two or three days at Fiacenza owing to an informality in the Baroness's passport, which had not been vise by the Austrian Legation at Florence. In vain she pleaded that she was told at the inn at Florence that such visa was not necessary; the police officer at the Austrian Douane, at a short distance beyond Piacenza, was inexorable and refused to viser her passport to allow her to proceed. She was in a sad dilemma and it was 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 of my chilly habits and susceptibility of cold and who had passed several years within the tropics to scale the Alps on foot in the middle of December and to walk 24 miles in snow and ice at one o'clock in the morning, which was the hour at which we started. I was well clad in flannel and I went thro' the journey valiantly and in high spirits and without suffering much from the cold till within five miles of the Hospice, when a heavy snow storm came on; it then began to look a little ugly and but for Napoleon's grand chausses we were lost. We struggled on three miles further in the snow before we fell in with a maison de refuge. We knocked there and nobody answered. We then determined coute que coute to push on to the Hospice which we knew could not be more than two miles distant; indeed it was much more advisable so to do than to run the risk of being frozen by remaining two or three hours in the cold air till the diligence should come up. In standing still I began to feel the cold bitterly; so in spite of the snow storm, we pushed on and arrived at the inn at Mont-Cenis at five in the morning.

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