is loyal to others.  His great defect is flippancy, and a total want of self-possession.”  The narrator also dwells on his horror of interviewers, by whom at this time he was even more than usually beset.  One visitor of the period ingenuously observes—­“Certain persons will be chagrined to hear that Byron’s mode of life does not furnish the smallest food for calumny.”  Another says, “I never saw a countenance more composed and still—­I might even add, more sweet and prepossessing.  But his temper was easily ruffled and for a whole day; he could not endure the ringing of bells, bribed his neighbours to repress their noises, and failing, retaliated by surpassing them; he never forgave Colonel Carr for breaking one of his dog’s ribs, though he generally forgave injuries without forgetting them.  He had a bad opinion of the inertness of the Genoese; for whatever he himself did he did with a will—­’toto se corpore miscuit,’ and was wont to assume a sort of dictatorial tone—­as if ’I have said it, and it must be so’ were enough.”

From these waifs and strays of gossip we return to a subject of deeper interest.  The Countess of Blessington, with natural curiosity, was anxious to elicit from Byron some light on the mystery of his domestic affairs, and renewed the attempt previously made by Madame de Stael, to induce him to some movement towards a reconciliation with his wife.  His reply to this overture was to show her a letter which he had written to Lady Byron from Pisa, but never forwarded, of the tone of which the following extracts must be a sufficient indication:—­“I have to acknowledge the receipt of Ada’s hair....  I also thank you for the inscription of the date and name; and I will tell you why.  I believe they are the only two or three words of your hand-writing in my possession, for your letters I returned, and except the two words—­or rather the one word ‘household’ written twice—­in an old account book, I have no other.  Every day which keeps us asunder should, after so long a period, rather soften our mutual feelings, which must always have one rallying-point as long as our child exists.  We both made a bitter mistake, but now it is over, I considered our re-union as not impossible for more than a year after the separation, but then I gave up the hope.  I am violent, but not malignant; for only fresh provocations can awaken my resentment.  Remember that if you have injured me in aught, this forgiveness is something, and that if I have injured you, it is something more still, if it be true, as moralists assert, that the most offending are the least forgiving.”  “It is a strange business,” says the Countess, about Lady Byron.  “When he was praising her mental and personal qualifications, I asked him how all that he now said agreed with certain sarcasms supposed to be a reference to her in his works.  He smiled, shook his head, and said, they were meant to spite and vex her, when he was wounded and irritated at her refusing to receive