"My dearest Teresa,--I have read this book in your garden;--my love, you were absent, or else I could not have read it. It is a favourite book of yours, and the writer was a friend of mine. You will not understand these English words, and _others_ will not understand them--which is the reason I have not scrawled them in Italian. But you will recognise the hand-writing of him who passionately loved you, and you will divine that, over a book which was yours, he could only think of love. In that word, beautiful in all languages, but most so in yours--_Amor mio_--is comprised my existence here and hereafter. I feel I exist here, and I fear that I shall exist hereafter,--to _what_ purpose you will decide; my destiny rests with you, and you are a woman, seventeen years of age, and two out of a convent. I wish that you had stayed there, with all my heart,--or, at least, that I had never met you in your married state. "But all this is too late. I love you, and you love me,--at least, you _say so_, and _act_ as if you _did_ so, which last is a great consolation in all events. But _I_ more than love you, and cannot cease to love you. "Think of me, sometimes, when the Alps and the ocean divide us,--but they never will, unless you _wish_ it. BYRON. "Bologna, August 25. 1819." [Footnote 44: One of these notes, written at the end of the 5th chapter, 18th book of Corinne ("Fragmens des Pensees de Corinne") is as follows:-- "I knew Madame de Stael well,--better than she knew Italy,--but I little thought that, one day, I should _think with her thoughts_, in the country where she has laid the scene of her most attractive productions. She is sometimes right, and often wrong, about Italy and England; but almost always true in delineating the heart, which is of but one nation, and of no country,--or, rather, of all. "BYRON. "Bologna, August 23. 1819." ] [Footnote 45: "Oh Love! what is it, in this world of ours, Which makes it fatal to be loved? ah! why With cypress branches hast thou wreath'd thy bowers, And made thy best interpreter a sigh? As those who dote on odours pluck the flowers, And place them on their breasts--but place to die.-- Thus the frail beings we would fondly cherish Are laid within our bosoms but to perish." ] * * * * * LETTER 339. TO MR. MURRAY. "Bologna, August 24. 1819. "I wrote to you by last post, enclosing a buffooning letter for publication, addressed to the buffoon R----ts, who has thought proper to tie a canister to his own tail. It was written off-hand, and in the midst of circumstances not very favourable to facetiousness, so that there may, perhaps, be more bitterness than enough for that sort of small acid punch:--you will tell me.