"P.S. Allegra is here in good health and spirits--I shall keep her with me till I go to England, which will perhaps be in the spring. It has just occurred to me that you may not perhaps like to undertake the office of judge between Mr. E. and your humble servant.--Of course, as Mr. Liston (the comedian, not the ambassador) says, '_it is all hoptional_;' but I have no other resource. I do not wish to find him a rascal, if it can be avoided, and would rather think him guilty of carelessness than cheating. The case is this--can I, or not, give him a character for _honesty_?--It is not my intention to continue him in my service." [Footnote 57: Mr. Hoppner, before his departure from Venice for Switzerland, had, with all the zeal of a true friend, written a letter to Lord Byron, entreating him "to leave Ravenna while yet he had a whole skin, and urging him not to risk the safety of a person he appeared so sincerely attached to--as well as his own--for the gratification of a momentary passion, which could only be a source of regret to both parties." In the same letter Mr. Hoppner informed him of some reports he had heard lately at Venice, which, though possibly, he said, unfounded, had much increased his anxiety respecting the consequences of the connection formed by him.] * * * * * LETTER 342. TO MR. HOPPNER. "October 25. 1819. "You need not have made any excuses about the letter: I never said but that you might, could, should, or would have reason. I merely described my own state of inaptitude to listen to it at that time, and in those circumstances. Besides, you did not speak from your _own_ authority--but from what you said you had heard. Now my blood boils to hear an Italian speaking ill of another Italian, because, though they lie in particular, they speak truth in general by speaking ill at all;--and although they know that they are trying and wishing to lie, they do not succeed, merely because they can say nothing so bad of each other, that it _may_ not, and must not be true, from the atrocity of their long debased national character.[58]