The
Husband And Wife Being Perfectly Reconciled Lived Happily And No Doubt The
Vine Was Cultivated As Usual.
I left Florence the 27th November, and arrived at Turin 5th December.
In an
evil hour I engaged myself to accompany an old Swiss Baroness with whom I
became acquainted at the Hotel of Mine Hembert to accompany her to Turin.
She had with her her son, a fine boy of thirteen years of age but very much
spoiled. We engaged a vetturino to conduct us to Turin, stopping one day
at Milan. The Baroness did not speak Italian and generally sent for me to
interpret for her when any disputes occurred between her and the people at
the inns, and these disputes were tolerably frequent, as she always gave
the servants wherever she stopped a good deal of trouble and on departing
generally forgot to give them the buona grazia. I sometimes paid them for
her myself in order to avoid noise and tumult; at other times we departed
under vollies of abuse and imprecations such as brutta vecchia, maladetta
carogna, and so forth. 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.
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