Byron’s house stood in the midst of the exhalations of a muddy creek, and his natural irritability was increased by a more than usually long ascetic regimen.  From the day of his arrival in Greece he discarded animal food and lived mainly on toast, vegetables, and cheese, olives and light wine, at the rate of forty paras a day.  In spite of his strength of purpose, his temper was not always proof against the rapacity and turbulence by which he was surrounded.  About the middle of February, when the artillery had been got into readiness for the attack on Lepanto—­the northern, as Patras was the southern, gate of the gulf, still in the hands of the Turks—­the expedition was thrown back by the unexpected rising of the Suliotes.  These peculiarly Irish Greeks, chronically seditious by nature, were on this occasion, as afterwards appeared, stirred up by emissaries of Colocatroni, who, though assuming the position of the rival of Mavrocordatos, was simply a brigand on a large scale in the Morca.  Exasperation at this mutiny, and the vexation of having to abandon a cherished scheme, seem to have been the immediately provoking causes of a violent convulsive fit which, on the evening of the 15th, attacked the poet, and endangered his life.  Next day he was better, but complained of weight in the head; and the doctors applying leeches too close to the temporal artery, he was bled till he fainted.  And now occurred the last of those striking incidents so frequent in his life, in reference to which we may quote the joint testimony of two witnesses.  Colonel Stanhope writes, “Soon after his dreadful paroxysm, when he was lying on his sick-bed, with his whole nervous system completely shaken, the mutinous Suliotes, covered with dirt and splendid attires, broke into his apartment, brandishing their costly arms and loudly demanding their rights.  Lord Byron, electrified by this unexpected act, seemed to recover from his sickness; and the more the Suliotes raged, the more his calm courage triumphed.  The scene was truly sublime.”  “It is impossible,” says Count Gamba, “to do justice to the coolness and magnanimity which he displayed upon every trying occasion.  Upon trifling occasions he was certainly irritable; but the aspect of danger calmed him in an instant, and restored him the free exercise of all the powers of his noble nature.  A more undaunted man in the hour of peril never breathed.”  A few days later, the riot being renewed, the disorderly crew were, on payment of their arrears, finally dismissed; but several of the English artificers under Parry left about the same time, in fear of their lives.