“Returning, on the bridge near the mill, met an old woman.  I asked her age—­she said ‘Trecroci.’  I asked my groom (though myself a decent Italian) what the devil her three crosses meant.  He said, ninety years, and that she had five years more to boot!!  I repeated the same three times, not to mistake—­ninety-five years!!!—­and she was yet rather active—­heard my question, for she answered it—­saw me, for she advanced towards me; and did not appear at all decrepit, though certainly touched with years.  Told her to come to-morrow, and will examine her myself.  I love phenomena.  If she is ninety-five years old, she must recollect the Cardinal Alberoni, who was legate here.

“On dismounting, found Lieutenant E. just arrived from Faenza.  Invited him to dine with me to-morrow.  Did not invite him for to-day, because there was a small turbot, (Friday, fast regularly and religiously,) which I wanted to eat all myself.  Ate it.

“Went out—­found T. as usual—­music.  The gentlemen, who make revolutions and are gone on a shooting, are not yet returned.  They don’t return till Sunday—­that is to say, they have been out for five days, buffooning, while the interests of a whole country are at stake, and even they themselves compromised.

“It is a difficult part to play amongst such a set of assassins and blockheads—­but, when the scum is skimmed off, or has boiled over, good may come of it.  If this country could but be freed, what would be too great for the accomplishment of that desire? for the extinction of that Sigh of Ages?  Let us hope.  They have hoped these thousand years.  The very revolvement of the chances may bring it—­it is upon the dice.

“If the Neapolitans have but a single Massaniello amongst them, they will beat the bloody butchers of the crown and sabre.  Holland, in worse circumstances, beat the Spains and Philips; America beat the English; Greece beat Xerxes; and France beat Europe, till she took a tyrant; South America beats her old vultures out of their nest; and, if these men are but firm in themselves, there is nothing to shake them from without.

“January 28. 1821.

“Lugano Gazette did not come.  Letters from Venice.  It appears that the Austrian brutes have seized my three or four pounds of English powder.  The scoundrels!—­I hope to pay them in ball for that powder.  Rode out till twilight.

“Pondered the subjects of four tragedies to be written (life and circumstances permitting), to wit, Sardanapalus, already begun; Cain, a metaphysical subject, something in the style of Manfred, but in five acts, perhaps, with the chorus; Francesca of Rimini, in five acts; and I am not sure that I would not try Tiberius.  I think that I could extract a something, of my tragic, at least, out of the gloomy sequestration and old age of the tyrant—­and even out of his sojourn at Caprea—­by softening the details, and exhibiting the despair which must have led to those very vicious pleasures.  For none but a powerful and gloomy mind overthrown would have had recourse to such solitary horrors,—­being also, at the same time, old, and the master of the world.