Journal of the conversations of lord Byron ... in the years 1821 and 1822

or curiosity. She is too happy to get "her liberty on any terms, and he her

money or her person. There is no love

on either side. What happiness is to "be expected, or constancy, from such a liaison? Is it not natural, that in her "intercourse with a world, of which she "knows and has seen nothing, and unre"strained mistress of her own time and

actions, she should find somebody to

"like better, and who likes her better,

than her husband? The Count Guic

cioli, for instance, who is the richest man "in Romagna, was sixty when he married "Teresa; she sixteen. From the first they had separate apartments, and she always used to call him Sir. What

could be expected from such a prepos"terous connexion? For some time she 66 was an Angiolina, and he a Marino

Faliero, a good old man; but young

women, and your Italian ones too, are "not satisfied with your good old men.

Love is not the same dull, cold, calcu"lating feeling here as in the North. It "is the business, the serious occupation "of their lives; it is a want, a necessity. Somebody properly defines a woman, ‘a "creature that loves.' They die of love; particularly the Romans: they begin to love earlier, and feel the passion later than the Northern people. When I

was at Venice, two dowagers of sixty "made love to me.-But to return to "the Guiccioli. The old Count did not

object to her availing herself of the privileges of her country; an Italian "would have reconciled him to the thing: indeed for some time he winked at our

intimacy, but at length made an excep

tion against me, as a foreigner, a heretic,

an Englishman, and, what was worse than all, a liberal.

"He insisted--the Guiccioli was as ob

stinate; her family took her part. Catholics cannot get divorces. But, to the "scandal of all Romagna, the matter was

at length referred to the Pope, who or"dered 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 disclosed a plot laid with the sanction of "the Legate for shutting her up in a con"vent for life, which she narrowly escaped.

-Except Greece, I was never so attach

"ed to any place in my life as to Ravenna, "and but for the failure of the Constitu

“tionalists and this fracas, should probably never have left it. The peasan

try are the best people in the world, "and the beauty of their women is extraordinary. Those at Tivoli and Frescati, who are so much vaunted, are

mere Sabines, coarse creatures, comYou may

pared to the Romagnese.

talk of your English women, and it is true that out of one hundred Italians

and English you will find thirty of the " latter handsome; but then there will be 66 one Italian on the other side of the

scale, who will more than balance thè

deficit in numbers--one who, like the "Florence Venus, has no rival, and can "have none in the North. I have learnt

Libros