trying his ‘cunning in fence.’  But what could I do?  He talked of ‘honour, and satisfaction, and his commission;’ he produced a military passport; there are severe punishments for regular duels on the Continent, and trifling ones for rencontres, so that it is best to fight it out directly; he had robbed, and then wanted to insult me;—­what could I do?  My patience was gone, and the weapons at hand, fair and equal.  Besides, it was just after dinner, when my digestion was bad, and I don’t like to be disturbed.  His friend * * is at Forli; we shall meet on my way back to Ravenna.  The Hanoverian seems the greater rogue of the two; and if my valour does not ooze away like Acres’s—­’Odds flints and triggers!’ if it should be a rainy morning, and my stomach in disorder, there may be something for the obituary.

“Now pray, ’Sir Lucius, do not you look upon me as a very ill-used gentleman?’ I send my Lieutenant to match Mr. Hobhouse’s Major Cartwright:  and so ‘good morrow to you, good master Lieutenant.’  With regard to other things I will write soon, but I have been quarrelling and fooling till I can scribble no more.”

* * * * *

In the month of September, Count Guiccioli, being called away by business to Ravenna, left his young Countess and her lover to the free enjoyment of each other’s society at Bologna.  The lady’s ill health, which had been the cause of her thus remaining behind, was thought, soon after, to require the still further advantage of a removal to Venice; and the Count her husband, being written to on the subject, consented, with the most complaisant readiness, that she should proceed thither in company with Lord Byron.  “Some business” (says the lady’s own Memoir) “having called Count Guiccioli to Ravenna, I was obliged, by the state of my health, instead of accompanying him, to return to Venice, and he consented that Lord Byron should be the companion of my journey.  We left Bologna on the fifteenth of September:  we visited the Euganean Hills and Arqua, and wrote our names in the book which is presented to those who make this pilgrimage.  But I cannot linger over these recollections of happiness;—­the contrast with the present is too dreadful.  If a blessed spirit, while in the full enjoyment of heavenly happiness, were sent down to this earth to suffer all its miseries, the contrast could not be more dreadful between the past and the present, than what I have endured from the moment when that terrible word reached my ears, and I for ever lost the hope of again beholding him, one look from whom I valued beyond earth’s all happiness.  When I arrived at Venice, the physicians ordered that I should try the country air, and Lord Byron, having a villa at La Mira, gave it up to me, and came to reside there with me.  At this place we passed the autumn, and there I had the pleasure of forming your acquaintance."[47]

It was my good fortune, at this period, in the course of a short and hasty tour through the north of Italy, to pass five or six days with Lord Byron at Venice.  I had written to him on my way thither to announce my coming, and to say how happy it would make me could I tempt him to accompany me as far as Rome.