e
moonlight--one of those women who may be made any thing. I am sure
if I put a poniard into the hand of this one, she would plunge it
where I told her,--and into _me_, if I offended her. I like this
kind of animal, and am sure that I should have preferred Medea to
any woman that ever breathed. You may, perhaps, wonder that I don't
in that case. I could have forgiven the dagger or the bowl, any
thing, but the deliberate desolation piled upon me, when I stood
alone upon my hearth, with my household gods shivered around me[27]
* * Do you suppose I have forgotten or forgiven it? It has
comparatively swallowed up in me every other feeling, and I am only
a spectator upon earth, till a tenfold opportunity offers. It may
come yet. There are others more to be blamed than * * * *, and it
is on these that my eyes are fixed unceasingly."

[Footnote 26: This little child had been sent to him by its mother about
four or five months before, under the care of a Swiss nurse, a young
girl not above nineteen or twenty years of age, and in every respect
unfit to have the charge of such an infant, without the superintendence
of some more experienced person. "The child, accordingly," says my
informant, "was but ill taken care of;--not that any blame could attach
to Lord Byron, for he always expressed himself most anxious for her
welfare, but because the nurse wanted the necessary experience. The poor
girl was equally to be pitied; for, as Lord Byron's household consisted
of English and Italian men servants, with whom she could hold no
converse, and as there was no other female to consult with and assist
her in her charge, nothing could be more forlorn than her situation
proved to be."

Soon after the date of the above letter, Mrs. Hoppner, the lady of the
Consul General, who had, from the first, in compassion both to father
and child, invited the little Allegra occasionally to her house, very
kindly proposed to Lord Byron to take charge of her altogether, and an
arrangement was accordingly concluded upon for that purpose.]

[Footnote 27:

"I had one only fount of quiet left,
And that they poison'd! _My pure household gods
Were shivered on my hearth._" MARINO FALIERO.
]

* * * * *

LETTER 323. TO MR. MURRAY.

"Venice, September 24. 1818.

"In the one hundredth and thirty-second stanza of Canto fourth, the
sta