[Footnote 88:  This portrait, though destined for America, was, it appears, never sent thither.  A few copies of it have since been painted by Mr. West, but the original picture was purchased by Mr. Joy, of Hartham Park, Wilts; who is also the possessor of the original portrait of Madame Guiccioli, by the same artist.]

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Soon after the above letters were written, Lord Byron removed to Genoa, having taken a house, called the Villa Saluzzo, at Albaro, one of the suburbs of that city.  From the time of the unlucky squabble with the serjeant-major at Pisa, his tranquillity had been considerably broken in upon, as well by the judicial enquiries consequent upon that event, as by the many sinister rumours and suspicions to which it gave rise.  Though the wounded man had recovered, his friends all vowed vengeance with the dagger:  and the sensation which the affair and its various consequences had produced was,—­to Madame Guiccioli more particularly, from the situation in which her family stood, in regard to politics,—­distressing and alarming.  While the impression, too, of this event was still recent, another circumstance occurred which, though comparatively unimportant, had the unlucky effect of again drawing the attention of the Tuscans to their new visitors.  During Lord Byron’s short visit to Leghorn, a Swiss servant in his employ having quarrelled, on some occasion, with the brother of Madame Guiccioli, drew his knife upon the young Count, and wounded him slightly on the cheek.  This affray, happening so soon after the other, was productive also of so much notice and conversation, that the Tuscan government, in its horror of every thing like disturbance, thought itself called upon to interfere; and orders were accordingly issued, that, within four days, the two Counts Gamba, father and son, should depart from Tuscany.  To Lord Byron this decision was, in the highest degree, provoking and disconcerting; it being one of the conditions of the Guiccioli’s separation from her husband, that she should thenceforward reside under the same roof with her father.  After balancing in his mind between various projects,—­sometimes thinking of Geneva, and sometimes, as we have seen, of South America,—­he at length decided, for the present, to transfer his residence to Genoa.

His habits of life, while at Pisa, had but very little differed, except in the new line of society into which his introduction to Shelley’s friends led him,—­from the usual monotonous routine in which, so singularly for one of his desultory disposition, the daily course of his existence had now, for some years, flowed.  At two he usually breakfasted, and at three, or, as the year advanced, four o’clock, those persons who were in the habit of accompanying him in his rides, called upon him.  After, occasionally, a game of billiards, he proceeded,—­and, in order to avoid starers, in his carriage,—­as far as the gates of the town, where his horses met him.