one, instead of dining at Lord H.'s, where I was
asked,--but not inclined to go anywhere. Hobhouse says I am growing a
_loup garou_,--a solitary hobgoblin. True;--'I am myself alone.' The
last week has been passed in reading--seeing plays--now and then
visiters--sometimes yawning and sometimes sighing, but no writing,--save
of letters. If I could always read, I should never feel the want of
society. Do I regret it?--um!--'Man delights not me,' and only one
woman--at a time.

"There is something to me very softening in the presence of a
woman,--some strange influence, even if one is not in love with
them,--which I cannot at all account for, having no very high opinion of
the sex. But yet,--I always feel in better humour with myself and every
thing else, if there is a woman within ken. Even Mrs. Mule[2], my
fire-lighter,--the most ancient and withered of her kind,--and (except
to myself) not the best-tempered--always makes me laugh,--no difficult
task when I am 'i' the vein.'

"Heigho! I would I were in mine island!--I am not well; and yet I look
in good health. At times, I fear, 'I am not in my perfect mind;'--and
yet my heart and head have stood many a crash, and what should ail them
now? They prey upon themselves, and I am sick--sick--'Prithee, undo this
button--why should a cat, a rat, a dog have life--and _thou_ no life at
all?' Six-and-twenty years, as they call them, why, I might and should
have been a Pasha by this time. 'I 'gin to be a weary of the sun.'

"Buonaparte is not yet beaten; but has rebutted Blucher, and repiqued
Swartzenburg. This it is to have a head. If he again wins, 'Vae victis!'

[Footnote 2: This ancient housemaid, of whose gaunt and witch-like
appearance it would be impossible to convey any idea but by the pencil,
furnished one among the numerous instances of Lord Byron's proneness to
attach himself to any thing, however homely, that had once enlisted his
good nature in its behalf, and become associated with his thoughts. He
first found this old woman at his lodgings in Bennet Street, where, for
a whole season, she was the perpetual scarecrow of his visiters. When,
next year, he took chambers in Albany, one of the great advantages which
his friends looked to in the change was, that they should get rid of
this phantom. But, no,--there she was again--he had actually brought her
with him from Bennet Street. The following year saw him married, and,
with a regular establishment of servants, in Pi