He escaped to Italy on a Genoese galley.

His feet carried him as far as Bergamo, but he could go no farther, and now lay ill, perhaps dying, among sympathizing strangers.

I set out at once and did not spare horseflesh on the way to Bergamo, but though there were many strange and beautiful things to be seen on my way, they afforded me little pleasure, the thought of Louis, so dangerously ill, saddened my joyous spirits.

Every running brook urged me to hasten, and the lofty mountains seemed like jealous barriers.

When once beyond St.Gotthard I felt less anxious, and as I rode down from Bellinzona to Lake Lugano, and the sparkling surface of the water beyond the city smiled at me like a blue eye, forgot my grief for a time, waved my hat, and sung a song.
In Bergamo I found my brother, alive, but enfeebled in mind and body, weak, and without any desire to take up the burden of life again.