the amber immortalisation, she possesses there—­being herself a heroine.  There was no exaggeration in saying that many incidents of her life would appear improbable in fiction.  Her adventures with the Marquis de Salvo form one of the prettiest romances in the Italian language; everything in her destiny was touched with adventure:  nor was it the least of her claims to sympathy that she had incurred the special enmity of Napoleon.

After remaining about three weeks at Malta, Byron embarked with his friend in a brig of war, appointed to convoy a fleet of small merchantmen to Prevesa.  I had, about a fortnight before, passed over with the packet on her return from Messina to Girgenti, and did not fall in with them again till the following spring, when we met at Athens.  In the meantime, besides his Platonic dalliance with Mrs Spencer Smith, Byron had involved himself in a quarrel with an officer; but it was satisfactorily settled.

His residence at Malta did not greatly interest him.  The story of its chivalrous masters made no impression on his imagination—­none that appears in his works—­but it is not the less probable that the remembrance of the place itself occupied a deep niche in his bosom:  for I have remarked, that he had a voluntary power of forgetfulness, which, on more than one occasion, struck me as singular:  and I am led in consequence to think, that something unpleasant, connected with this quarrel, may have been the cause of his suppression of all direct allusion to the island.  It was impossible that his imagination could avoid the impulses of the spirit which haunts the walls and ramparts of Malta; and the silence of his muse on a topic so rich in romance, and so well calculated to awaken associations concerning the knights, in unison with the ruminations of Childe Harold, persuades me that there must have been some specific cause for the omission.  If it were nothing in the duel, I should be inclined to say, notwithstanding the seeming improbability of the notion, that it was owing to some curious modification of vindictive spite.  It might not be that Malta should receive no celebrity from his pen; but assuredly he had met with something there which made him resolute to forget the place.  The question as to what it was, he never answered the result would throw light into the labyrinths of his character.

CHAPTER X

Sails from Malta to Prevesa—­Lands at Patras—­Sails again—­Passes Ithaca—­Arrival at Prevesa

It was on the 19th of September, 1809, that Byron sailed in the Spider brig from Malta for Prevesa, and on the morning of the fourth day after, he first saw the mountains of Greece; next day he landed at Patras, and walked for some time among the currant grounds between the town and the shore.  Around him lay one of the noblest landscapes in the world, and afar in the north-east rose the purple summits of the Grecian mountains.