Here I learned to play on ye theorbo, taught by Sig.

Dominico Bassano.' After 'the folly and madnesse of the Carnevall' was over, Evelyn left Venice for Padua in January, 1646, but went back in March to take leave of his friends there, and at Easter set out on his return journey to England in company with the poet Waller, who had been glad to go abroad after being much worried by the Puritan party.

They travelled by way of Vicenza, Verona, Brescia, Milan, the Lago Maggiore, the Simplon Pass, Sion, and St.Maurice to Geneva.

Here again Evelyn became sick nigh unto death, from small-pox contracted at Beveretta, the night before reaching Geneva.

'Being extremely weary and complaining of my head, and finding little accommodation in the house, I caus'd one of our hostesses daughters to be removed out of her bed and went immediately into it whilst it was yet warme, being so heavy with pain and drowsinesse that I would not stay to have the sheets chang'd; but I shortly after payd dearly for my impatience, falling sick of the small-pox so soon as I came to Geneva, for by the smell of frankincense and ye tale of ye good woman told me of her daughter having had an ague, I afterwards concluded she had been newly recovered of the small-pox.' Becoming very ill he was bled of the physician 'a very learned old man.....