VI. THE CAMPO SANTO 341

105. How papa and mamma took this new vagary, I have no recollection; resignedly, at least: perhaps they also had some notion that I might think differently, and it was to be hoped in a more orthodox and becoming manner, after another sight of the Tribune.¹ At all events, they concluded to give me my own way entirely this time; and what time I chose. My health caused them no farther anxiety; they could trust my word to take care of myself every day, just the same as if I were coming home to tea: my mother was satisfied of Couttet’s skill as a physician, and care, if needed, as a nurse;-he was engaged for the summer in those capacities,-and, about the first week in April, I found myself dining on a trout of the Ain, at Champagnole; with Switzerland and Italy at my feet-for to-morrow.

106. Curiously, the principal opposition to this unprincipled escapade had been made by Turner. He knew that one of my chief objects was to see the motives of his last sketches on the St. Gothard; and he feared my getting into some scrape in the then disturbed state of the cantons. He had probably himself seen some of their doings in 1843, when “la vieille Suisse prit les armes, prévint les Bas-Valaisans, qui furent vaincus et massacrés au Pont du Trient, près de Martigny”; and again an expedition of the Corps Francs of the liberal cantons “pour expulser les Jesuits, et renverser le gouvernement,”* at Lucerne, had been summarily “renversée” itself by the Lucernois, 8th December, 1844, only three months before my intended start for the Alps. Every time Turner saw me during the winter, he said something to dissuade me from going abroad; when at last I went to say good-bye, he came down with me into the hall in Queen Anne Street, and opening the door just enough for me to pass, laid hold

*La Suisse Historique, par E. H. Gaullieur. Genève, 1855, p. 428.

¹ [See above, p. 269.]

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