Manfred tells us that his slumbers are 'a continuance of enduring thought,' since that 'all-nameless hour' when he committed the crime for which he suffers. He asks 'Forgetfulness of that which is within him--a crime which he cannot utter.' When told by the Seven Spirits that he cannot have self-oblivion, Manfred asks if Death would give it to him; and receives the sad reply that, being immortal, the spirit after death cannot forget the past. Eventually the Seventh Spirit--typifying, possibly, a Magdalen--appears before Manfred, in the shape of a beautiful woman. 'MANFRED. Oh God! if it be thus, and _thou_ Art not a madness and a mockery, I yet might be most happy.' When the figure vanishes, Manfred falls senseless. In the second act, Manfred, in reply to the chamois-hunter, who offers him a cup of wine, says: 'Away, away! there's blood upon the brim! Will it then never--never sink in the earth? 'Tis blood--my blood! the pure warm stream Which ran in the veins of my fathers, and in ours When we were in our youth, and had one heart, And loved each other as we should not love, And _this_ was shed: but still it rises up. Colouring the clouds that shut me out from Heaven.' One may well wonder what all this has to do with Augusta. The blood that ran in Byron's veins also ran in the veins of Mary Chaworth, and that blood, shed by Byron's kinsman, had caused a feud, which was not broken until Byron came upon the scene, and fell hopelessly in love with 'the last of a time-honoured race.' Byron from his boyhood always believed that there was a blood-curse upon him. When, two years later, he wrote 'The Duel' (December, 1818), he again alludes to the subject: 'I loved thee--I will not say _how_, Since things like these are best forgot: Perhaps thou mayst imagine now Who loved thee and who loved thee not. And thou wert wedded to another, And I at last another wedded: I am a father, thou a mother, To strangers vowed, with strangers bedded. * * * * * 'Many a bar, and many a feud, Though never told, well understood, Rolled like a river wide between-- _And then there was the curse of blood_, Which even my Heart's can not remove. * * * * * 'I've seen the sword that slew him; he, The slain, stood in a like degree To thee, as he, the Slayer stood (Oh, had it been but other blood!) In Kin and Chieftainship to me. Thus came the Heritage to thee.'