One night of strong wind Byron, defying the storm, said he would sing them an Albanian song. “Now be sentimental and give me all your attention.” It was a strange wild howl that he gave forth, laughing the while at their disappointment, who had expected a wild Eastern melody. From that day onward Mary and Claire named him “the Albaneser,” and “Albé” for short. The two poets made a literary pilgrimage round the lake. They visited the spot where Rousseau has placed his _Nouvelle Héloïse_, “Clarens, sweet Clarens, birthplace of deep Love”; and Lausanne and Ferney, full of memories of Gibbon and Voltaire. Shelley’s enthusiasm gained Byron, who wrote under its influence some of his finest lines. Near Meillerie one of the sudden lake-storms nearly upset the boat. Byron began to strip. Shelley, who could not swim, sat still with folded arms. His calmness increased Byron’s admiration for him, although he hid it more carefully than ever. Long afterwards Shelley, speaking of this storm, said, “I knew that my companion would try to save me, and it was a humiliating idea.” Sick of hotel life and the impertinent curiosity of their fellow-boarders, the Shelleys hired a cottage at Coligny on the edge of the lake. Byron settled himself at the Villa Diodati, a short distance away. The two houses were only separated by a vineyard. Here, some vine-dressers at work in the early morning saw Claire come out of Byron’s villa and run across to Shelley’s. She lost a slipper on the way, but ashamed of being seen did not stop to pick it up. The honest Swiss peasants, chuckling hugely, made haste to carry the slipper of the English “Miss” to the mayor of the village. Her love affair did not prosper. She was with child, and Byron was utterly tired of her. He let her see it. For a moment perhaps he had admired her voice, and her vivacity, but very soon she bored him. Nor did he feel himself in any way bound to this young woman who had thrust herself upon him with such pertinacity. . . . “‘Carry off’ quotha! and ‘girl.’ I should like to know _who_ has been carried off except poor dear _me_. I have been more ravished myself than anybody since the Trojan War. I am accused of being hard on women. It may be so, but I have been their martyr. My whole life has been sacrificed _to_ them and _by_ them.” Shelley went to talk with him of Claire’s future, and of the child’s. As to Claire’s, Byron was perfectly indifferent. All he wanted was to get rid of her as soon as possible and never to see her again. Shelley had nothing to say on this point, but he defended the rights of the unborn child. At first Byron had the idea of confiding it to his sister Augusta. Claire refusing her consent, he then undertook to look after the child himself as soon as it was a year old, on condition that he should be absolutely master of it.