rgio Cornaro, a man of the highest probity and candour,
who showed a vigilant affection for his patients, came at once to visit
me. The intense pains I suffered during the following night, and the
excessive fierceness with which the fever renewed its assaults, made me
feel that I was about to follow my relatives and friends to the tomb. I
waited through those sombre hours; but when I heard my servant stirring,
I sent him for a confessor. The man refused at first, and had to be
dispatched upon his errand by a voice more worthy of a cut-throat than a
penitent. While I was confessing, Dr. Cornaro entered. He inquired what
I had been about, and I replied that I did not think it amiss to be
prepared beforehand. "I felt sufficiently ill to fulfil the duties of a
Catholic upon his death-bed, and have saved you the trouble of breaking
the news to me in case of necessity." "Very well," said he, feeling my
pulse and frowning. "We must cut short this fever with quinine, before
it reaches the third assault. It is a violent attack of the sort we call
pernicious." How many pounds of the drug I swallowed is unknown to me. I
only remember that they brought me a large glassful every two hours. The
fever abated; but I had to drag through three months of a slow and
painful convalescence.

But now it is time to close these Memoirs. The publisher, Palese,
informs me that the third volume will be more than large enough. I lay
my pen aside just at the moment when I should have had to describe that
vast undulation called the French Revolution, which swept over Europe,
upsetting kingdoms and drowning the landmarks of immemorial history.
This awful typhoon caught Venice in its gyration, affording a splendidly
hideous field for philosophical reflection. "Splendidly hideous" is a
contradiction in terms; but at the period in which we are living
paradoxes have become classical.

The sweet delusive dream of a democracy, organised and based on
irremovable foundations--the expectation of a moral impossibility--made
men howl and laugh and dance and weep together. The ululations of the
dreamers, yelling out _Liberty_, _Equality_, _Fraternity_, deafened our
ears; and those of us who still remained awake were forced to feign
themselves dreamers, in order to protect their honour, their property,
their lives. People who are not accustomed to trace the inevitable
effects of doctrines propagated through the centuries see only mysteries
and prodigies in convul