Byron left for Italy in the month of October, stopping first at Milan to visit the Ambrosian Library. His next halt was at Verona, where he saw the tomb of Juliet; and, finally, he took up his residence in Venice, where his name became a household word. Venice had never possessed any horses except the four bronze ones which had figured for twelve years on top of Carrousel's triumphal arch. But Byron never walked, and he was therefore the first person whose living horses clattered in the Square of Saint Mark, on the quai des Esclavons and on the banks of the Brenta. It was in Venice that the real romance of his life began. Here he had three love affairs, each in a different rank of Venetian society: with Marguerite, Marianne and ... Alas! the most faithless of the three was the great lady who shall be nameless--she whom Byron loved more than all, perhaps, more than Miss Chaworth, more than Caroline Lamb. It is curious to think that this lady, even at this day, thirty-three years after the time of which I am writing, is still a fascinating woman. I made her acquaintance in Rome when she was in the full bloom of her beauty, when she was almost as wonderful to listen to as to look at, to hear as to see. She lived solely upon the memories of the great poet whom she had loved. It seemed as though the years of their love constituted the one bright spot in her life, and in looking back the obscurity that formed the rest of her life was ignored by her. But if I began to speak of her, I should have to reveal her name; I should have to speak of the walks we had together by moonlight in the Forum and the Coliseum; I should have to repeat what she told me among the shadows of those great ruins, when she never spoke but of the illustrious dead, who had trodden with her the same stones that we were treading and had sat by her side in the same places where we rested. Oh! madam, madam! Why were you unfaithful to the poet's memory, when your memories of him had gone on increasing in strength, aided by his death, until you had magnified your love into a god? Why was not the honour of having been Byron's mistress quite sufficient, instead of taking any title that a husband, no matter how distinguished he might be, could give you? If I might only venture to repeat here what Déjazet once said to Georges, with reference to Napoleon! It is true that Byron, with all his fancies and eccentricities and passions, cannot have been a very pleasant lover. But she should have been faithless to him when he was alive, and not after he was dead. The world has forgiven the Empress Joséphine her infidelities in the Tuileries, but it will never forgive Marie-Louise, the widow, her faithlessness at Parma. We will not say any more, madam; we will think, instead, of the poems Byron wrote at Venice. Here he composed _Marino Faliero_, _The Two Foscari_, _Sardanapalus_, _Cain_, _The Prophecy of Dante_ and the third and fourth cantos of _Don Juan._