Denksopha (’thinking sofa’) from the Clouds by Aristophanes, I was sumptuously lodged in a palatial building, which in the winter served as the government house of the canton of Tessin, but in the summer was used as a hotel.  However, I soon fell again into the condition that had troubled me so long, and prevented me from taking any rest, owing to my extreme nervous strain and excitement, whenever I felt disposed to idle pleasantly.  I had taken a good many books with me, and proposed to entertain myself with Byron.  Unfortunately it required a great effort on my part to take any pleasure in his works, and the difficulty of doing so increased when I began to read his Don Juan.  After a few days’ time I began to wonder why I had come, and what I wanted to do here, when suddenly Herwegh wrote saying that he and several friends intended to join me at this place.  A mysterious instinct made me telegraph to my wife to come also.  She obeyed my call with surprising alacrity, and arrived unexpectedly in the middle of the night, after travelling by post-chaise across the St. Gotthard Pass.  She was so fatigued that she at once fell into a sound sleep on the Denksopha, from which the fiercest storm that I ever remember failed to awaken her.  On the following day my Zurich friends arrived.

Herwegh’s chief companion was Dr. Francois Wille.  I had learned to know him some time before at Herwegh’s house:  his chief characteristics were a face much scarred in students’ duels, and a great tendency to witty and outspoken remarks.  He had recently been staying near Meilen on the Lake of Zurich, and he often asked me to visit him there with Herwegh.  Here we saw something of the habits and customs of a Hamburg household, which was kept up in a fairly prosperous style by his wife, the daughter of Herr Sloman, a wealthy shipowner.  Although in reality he remained a student all his life, he had made himself a position and formed a large circle of acquaintances by editing a Hamburg political newspaper.  He was a brilliant conversationalist, and was considered good company.  He seemed to have taken up with Herwegh with the object of overcoming the latter’s antipathy to Alpine climbing, and his consequent reluctance to undertake it.  He himself had made preparations to walk over the Gotthard Pass with a Professor Eichelberger, and this had made Herwegh furious, as he declared that walking tours were only permissible where it was impossible to drive, and not on these broad highways.  After making an excursion into the neighbourhood of Lugano, during which I got heartily sick of the childish sound of the church bells, so common in Italy, I persuaded my friends to go with me to the Borromean Islands, which I was longing to see again.  During the steamer trip on Lake Maggiore, we met a delicate-looking man with a long cavalry moustache, whom in private was humourously dubbed General Haynau, and the distrust with which we affected to treat him was a source of some amusement to us.