Yet when he lands in Belgium, he travels--true to his old recklessness--like a prince; with body servants and physician, and a lumbering family coach, with its showy trappings. Waterloo was fresh then, and the wreck and the blood, and the glory of it were all scored upon his brain, and shortly afterward by his fiery hand upon the poem we know so well, and which will carry that streaming war pennon in the face of other generations than ours. Then came the Rhine, with its castles and traditions, glittering afresh in the fresh stories that he wove; and after these his settlement for a while upon the borders of Lake Geneva--where, in some one of these talks of ours we found the studious Gibbon, under his acacia-trees, and where Rousseau left his footprints--never to be effaced--at Clarens and Meillerie. One would suppose that literature could do no more with such outlooks on lake and mountain, as seem to mock at language. And yet the wonderful touch of Byron has kindled new interest in scenes on which the glowing periods of Rousseau had been lavished. Even the guide-books can none of them complete their record of the region without stealing descriptive gems from his verse; and his story of the _Prisoner of Chillon_ will always--for you and for me--lurk in the shadows that lie under those white castle walls, and in the murmur of the waters that ebb and flow--gently as the poem--all round about their foundations. I may mention that at the date of the Swiss visit, and under the influences and active co-operation of Madame de Staël--then a middle-aged and invalid lady residing at her country seat of Coppet, on the borders of Geneva Lake--Byron did make overtures for a reconciliation with his wife. They proved utterly without avail, even if they were not treated with scorn. And it is worthy of special note that while up to this date all mention of Lady Byron by the poet had been respectful, if not relenting and conciliatory--thereafter the vials of his wrath were opened, and his despairing scorn knew no bounds. Thus, in the “Incantation”--thrust into that uncanny work of _Manfred_--with which he was then at labor--he says: “Though thou seest me not pass by, Thou shalt feel me with thine eye, As a thing that, though unseen, Must be near thee, and hath been; And when, in that secret dread, Thou hast turned around thy head, Thou shalt marvel I am not As thy shadow on the spot; And the power which thou dost feel Shall be what thou must conceal.” _Shelley and Godwin._