generally constitutes the
whole drama. The young Italian found herself suddenly inspired with a
passion, of which, till that moment, her mind could not have formed the
least idea;--she had thought of love but as an amusement, and now became
its slave. If at the outset, too, less slow to be won than an Englishwoman,
no sooner did she begin to understand the full despotism of the passion
than her heart shrunk from it as something terrible, and she would have
escaped, but that the chain was already around her.

No words, however, can describe so simply and feelingly as her own, the
strong impression which their first meeting left upon her mind:--

"I became acquainted," says Madame Guiccioli, "with Lord Byron in the
April of 1819:--he was introduced to me at Venice, by the Countess Benzoni,
at one of that lady's parties. This introduction, which had so much
influence over the lives of us both, took place contrary to our wishes,
and had been permitted by us only from courtesy. For myself, more fatigued
than usual that evening on account of the late hours they keep at Venice,
I went with great repugnance to this party, and purely in obedience to
Count Guiccioli. Lord Byron, too, who was averse to forming new
acquaintances,--alleging that he had entirely renounced all attachments,
and was unwilling any more to expose himself to their consequences,--on
being requested by the Countess Benzoni to allow himself to be presented
to me, refused, and, at last, only assented from a desire to oblige her.

"His noble and exquisitely beautiful countenance, the tone of his voice,
his manners, the thousand enchantments that surrounded him, rendered him
so different and so superior a being to any whom I had hitherto seen, that
it was impossible he should not have left the most profound impression
upon me. From that evening, during the whole of my subsequent stay at
Venice, we met every day."

* * * * *

About the middle of April, Madame Guiccioli had been obliged to quit
Venice with her husband. Having several houses on the road from Venice to
Ravenna, it was his habit to stop at these mansions, one after the other,
in his journeys between the two cities; and from all these places the
enamoured young Countess now wrote to her lover, expressing, in the most
passionate and pathetic terms, her despair at leaving him. So utterly,
indeed, did this feeling overpower her, that three times, in the course of
her f