This lady, at the age of sixteen, was married to the Count, one of the richest noblemen in Romagna, but far advanced in life.  “From the first,” said Lord Byron, in his account of her, “they had separate apartments, and she always called him, Sir!  What could be expected from such a preposterous connection.  For some time she was an Angiolina and he a Marino Faliero, a good old man; but young Italian women are not satisfied with good old men, and the venerable Count did not object to her availing herself of the privileges of her country in selecting a cicisbeo; an Italian would have made it quite agreeable:  indeed, for some time he winked at our intimacy, but at length made an exception against me, as a foreigner, a heretic, an Englishman, and, what was worse than all, a Liberal.

“He insisted—­Teresa was as obstinate—­her family took her part.  Catholics cannot get divorces; but to the scandal of all Romagna, the matter was at last referred to the Pope, who ordered her a separate maintenance on condition that she should reside under her father’s roof.  All this was not agreeable, and at length I was forced to smuggle her out of Ravenna, having discovered a plot laid with the sanction of the legate, for shutting her up in a convent for life.”

The Countess Guiccioli was at this time about twenty, but she appeared younger; her complexion was fair, with large, dark, languishing eyes; and her auburn hair fell in great profusion of natural ringlets over her shapely shoulders.  Her features were not so regular as in their expression pleasing, and there was an amiable gentleness in her voice which was peculiarly interesting.  Leigh Hunt’s account of her is not essentially dissimilar from any other that I have either heard of or met with.  He differs, however, in one respect, from every other, in saying that her hair was yellow; but considering the curiosity which this young lady has excited, perhaps it may be as well to transcribe his description at length, especially as he appears to have taken some pains on it, and more particularly as her destiny seems at present to promise that the interest for her is likely to be revived by another unhappy English connection.

“Her appearance,” says Mr Hunt, “might have reminded an English spectator of Chaucer’s heroine: 

Yclothed was she, fresh for to devise,
Her yellow hair was braided in a tress
Behind her back, a yarde long I guess,
And in the garden (as the same uprist)
She walketh up and down, where as her list.

And then, as Dryden has it: 

At every turn she made a little stand,
And thrust among the thorns her lily hand.