When Naples rebelled in 1820 and 1821, Byron wrote to the Neapolitan Government and offered his purse and his sword. So, when reaction set in, and Ferdinand returned a second time from Sicily, and the lists of proscribed persons were published throughout Italy, it was feared Byron's name might be of the number of exiles. Then it happened that the poor people of Ravenna drew up a petition to the cardinal praying he might be allowed to stay among them. This man who boldly and openly offered the Neapolitans a thousand louis was a never failing source of helpfulness to the poor of Venice and its surrounding countryside; no poor man ever held out a hand towards him and drew it back empty, even if Byron himself were in the greatest straits, and more than once he had to borrow in order to give. He knew this but too well when he said, "Those who have persecuted me so long and so cruelly will triumph, and justice will only be done to me when this hand is as cold as their hearts." Thus, wherever he went, he left an impression as of fire,--he dazzled, warmed or scorched. In 1821, Byron left Venice, in whose streets no one had ever seen him on foot; the Brenta, upon whose banks no one had ever seen him take a walk; the Square of St. Mark, whose beauties he had never contemplated except from a window, for fear of revealing to the beauties of Venice the slight deformity of his leg, which not even the width of his trousers could disguise. From Venice he went to Pisa. There the news of two fresh troubles awaited him: the death of his natural daughter by an English woman, and the death of his friend Shelley, who was drowned during a sailing trip from Livorno to Lerici. He sent his daughter's body to England for burial. To save the body of his friend Shelley from the attentions Italian priests would no doubt have given it, he determined to have it burnt after the custom of the ancients. Trelawney, the bold pirate, was present, and relates the strange funeral rites, as he relates his lion hunt or his fight with the Malay prince. He was a companion worthy of the noble poet, and was himself a poet; his book is full of marvellous descriptions, all the more wonderful because they are always true, although sounding incredible. "We were on the seashore," said Trelawney; "in front of us lay the sea and its islands, behind us the Apennines, and by our side was the great blazing funeral-pyre. The flames, fanned by the wind from the sea, took a thousand fantastic shapes. The weather was very fine; the lazy waves from the Mediterranean gently kissed the shore, the sands were golden yellow and contrasted sharply with the deep blue of the sky; the mountains lifted their snowy crests up into the clouds, and the flames from the pyre steadily burnt higher and higher into the air."