to his care; it concluded: "With the most profound esteem, your most devoted servant, G. Verdi". Summer/Autumn 1844: Travel to and within Italy Gaetano's brother Giuseppe, on leave from Constantinople, arrived in Vienna in early June. He had intended to leave by about 22nd, but Gaetano's bout of illness delayed his departure, and the brothers traveled together to Bergamo on about 12 or 13 July proceeding slowly but arriving around the 21st. William Ashbrook describes the second half of 1844 as a period of "pathetic restlessness". He continues: "Donizetti went to Bergamo, Lovere on Lake Iseo [about 26 miles from Bergamo], back to Bergamo, to Milan [31 July], to Genoa [with his friend Antonio Dolci, on 3 August, where they stayed until 10 August because of illness], to Naples [by steamer, from which he wrote to Vasselli in Rome explaining that the upcoming visit may be last time he would see his brother], [then] to Rome [on 14 September to see Vasselli], back to Naples [on 2 October after being invited back to Naples for the first San Carlo performances of Maria di Rohan on 11 November, which was immensely successful], to Genoa [on 14 November by boat; arrived on the 19th] and on to Milan again [for two days]" before reaching Bergamo on 23 November where his found his old friend Mayr to be very ill. He delayed his departure for as long as possible, but Mayr died on 2 December shortly after Donizetti had left Bergamo. December 1844 – July 1845: Last visit to Vienna By 5 December he was in Vienna writing a letter to his friend Guglielmo Cottrau on 6th and again on 12th, stating "I am not well. I am in the hands of a doctor." While there were periods of relative calm, his health continued to fail him periodically and then there were relapses into depression, as expressed in a letter: "I am half-destroyed, it's a miracle that I'm still on my feet". Writing to unnamed Paris friends on 7 February, even after the very positive reaction received at the premiere of a specially-prepared Dom Sébastien on 6 February 1845 (which he had conducted for three performances of the total of 162 given over the following years until 1884), he grumbles about the reactions of the Parisian audiences and continues with a brief report on his health which, he says, "if it is no