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.
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