| Summary: | Behind the commonly accepted image of an euphoric and positive experience, the trip to Italy hides annoyances that may have cracked its beautiful order. But to what extent can the traveller judge for himself the failure of his project? Does the power to decide about it belong only to posterity? An inventory of a series of scenarios in the second half of the eighteenth century reveals a varied range of situations that can be interpreted in terms of failure, from journeys that were interrupted or did not meet the expectations of travellers or of their readers, to the question of whether silence was not the only possible, albeit very uncertain, sign of failure. Then, with Polish traveller Moszynski, we come to question how the elderly traveller deprived of a sense of sight can attempt to defy the threat of not completing his journey.
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