ted the attack, and the high, stainless reputation of
the person assailed, being sufficient, I thought, to neutralise any ill
effects such reflections might otherwise have produced. As I find it,
however, to be the opinion of all those whose opinions I most respect,
that, even with these antidotes, such an attack upon such a man ought
not to be left on record, I willingly expunge all trace of it from these
pages.]

* * * * *

While he was thus lingering irresolute at Bologna, the Countess
Guiccioli had been attacked with an intermittent fever, the violence of
which, combining with the absence of a confidential person to whom she
had been in the habit of intrusting her letters, prevented her from
communicating with him. At length, anxious to spare him the
disappointment of finding her so ill on his arrival, she had begun a
letter, requesting that he would remain at Bologna till the visit to
which she looked forward should bring her there also; and was in the act
of writing, when a friend came in to announce the arrival of an English
lord in Ravenna. She could not doubt for an instant that it was her
noble friend; and he had, in fact, notwithstanding his declaration to
Mr. Hoppner that it was his intention to return to Venice immediately,
wholly altered this resolution before the letter announcing it was
despatched,--the following words being written on the outside cover:--"I
am just setting off for Ravenna, June 8. 1819.--I changed my mind this
morning, and decided to go on."

The reader, however, shall have Madame Guiccioli's own account of these
events, which, fortunately for the interest of my narration, I am
enabled to communicate.

"On my departure from Venice, he had promised to come and see me at
Ravenna. Dante's tomb, the classical pine wood[36], the relics of
antiquity which are to be found in that place, afforded a sufficient
pretext for me to invite him to come, and for him to accept my
invitation. He came, in fact, in the month of June, arriving at Ravenna
on the day of the festival of the Corpus Domini; while I, attacked by a
consumptive complaint, which had its origin from the moment of my
quitting Venice, appeared on the point of death. The arrival of a
distinguished foreigner at Ravenna, a town so remote from the routes
ordinarily followed by travellers, was an event which gave rise to a
good deal of conversation. His motives for such a visit became the
subject of discu