My separation from Agatha cost me many tears, but not so many as those shed by her.  Her mother wept also, for she loved me, and was grateful for all my kindness to her daughter.  She said again and again that she could never have borne any rival but her own daughter, while the latter sobbed out that she wished she had not to part from me.

I did not like Passano, so I sent him to his family at Genoa, giving him the wherewithal to live till I came for him.  As to my man, I dismissed him for good reasons and took another, as I was obliged to have somebody; but since I lost my Spaniard I have never felt confidence in any of my servants.

I travelled with a Chevalier de Rossignan, whose acquaintance I had made, and we went by Casal to see the opera-bouffe there.

Rossignan was a fine man, a good soldier, fond of wine and women, and, though he was not learned, he knew the whole of Dante’s Divine Comedy by heart.  This was his hobby-horse, and he was always quoting it, making the passage square with his momentary feelings.  This made him insufferable in society, but he was an amusing companion for anyone who knew the sublime poet, and could appreciate his numerous and rare beauties.  Nevertheless he made me privately give in my assent to the proverb, Beware of the man of one book.  Otherwise he was intelligent, statesmanlike, and good-natured.  He made himself known at Berlin by his services as ambassador to the King of Sardinia.

There was nothing interesting in the opera at Casal, so I went to Pavia, where, though utterly unknown, I was immediately welcomed by the Marchioness Corti, who received all strangers of any importance.  In 1786 I made the acquaintance of her son, an admirable man, who honoured me with his friendship, and died quite young in Flanders with the rank of major-general.  I wept bitterly for his loss, but tears, after all, are but an idle tribute to those who cause them to flow.  His good qualities had endeared him to all his acquaintances, and if he had lived longer he would undoubtedly have risen to high command in the army.

I only stopped two days at Pavia, but it was decreed that I should get myself talked of, even in that short time.

At the second ballet at the opera an actress dressed in a tippet held out her cap to the bones as if to beg an alms, while she was dancing a pas de deux.  I was in the Marchioness of Corti’s box, and when the girl held out her cap to me I was moved by feelings of ostentation and benevolence to draw forth my purse and drop it in.  It contained about twenty ducats.  The girl took it, thanked me with a smile, and the pit applauded loudly.  I asked the Marquis Belcredi, who was near me, if she had a lover.

“She has a penniless French officer, I believe,” he replied; “there he is, in the pit.”

I went back to my inn, and was supping with M. Basili, a Modenese colonel, when the ballet girl, her mother, and her younger sister came to thank me for my providential gift.  “We are so poor,” said the girl.