“’Not actionable!’—­Chantre d’enfer![78]—­by * * that’s ’a
     speech,’ and I won’t put up with it.  A pretty title to give a man
     for doubting if there be any such place!

     “So my Gail is gone—­and Miss Mah_ony_ won’t take Money.  I am
     very glad of it—­I like to be generous free of expense.  But beg her
     not to translate me.

“Oh, pray tell Galignani that I shall send him a screed of doctrine if he don’t be more punctual.  Somebody regularly detains two, and sometimes four, of his Messengers by the way.  Do, pray, entreat him to be more precise.  News are worth money in this remote kingdom of the Ostrogoths.

     “Pray, reply.  I should like much to share some of your Champagne
     and La Fitte, but I am too Italian for Paris in general.  Make
     Murray send my letter to you—­it is full of epigrams.

     “Yours,” &c.

[Footnote 77:  An Irish phrase for being in a scrape.]

[Footnote 78:  The title given him by M. Lamartine, in one of his Poems.]

* * * * *

In the separation that had now taken place between Count Guiccioli and his wife, it was one of the conditions that the lady should, in future, reside under the paternal roof:—­in consequence of which, Madame Guiccioli, on the 16th of July, left Ravenna and retired to a villa belonging to Count Gamba, about fifteen miles distant from that city.  Here Lord Byron occasionally visited her—­about once or twice, perhaps, in a month—­passing the rest of his time in perfect solitude.  To a mind like his, whose world was within itself, such a mode of life could have been neither new nor unwelcome; but to the woman, young and admired, whose acquaintance with the world and its pleasures had but just begun, this change was, it must be confessed, most sudden and trying.  Count Guiccioli was rich, and, as a young wife, she had gained absolute power over him.  She was proud, and his station placed her among the highest in Ravenna.  They had talked of travelling to Naples, Florence, Paris,—­and every luxury, in short, that wealth could command was at her disposal.

All this she now voluntarily and determinedly sacrificed for Byron.  Her splendid home abandoned—­her relations all openly at war with her—­her kind father but tolerating, from fondness, what he could not approve—­she was now, upon a pittance of 200_l._ a year, living apart from the world, her sole occupation the task of educating herself for her illustrious friend, and her sole reward the few brief glimpses of him which their now restricted intercourse allowed.  Of the man who could inspire and keep alive so devoted a feeling, it may be pronounced with confidence that he could not have been such as, in the freaks of his own wayward humour, he represented himself; while, on the lady’s side, the whole history of her attachment goes to prove how completely an Italian woman, whether by nature or from her social position, is led to invert the usual course of such frailties among ourselves, and, weak in resisting the first impulses of passion, to reserve the whole strength of her character for a display of constancy and devotedness afterwards.