"Allow me, madam, to state the reasons for which it seems to me that Geneva would not be an appropriate residence for your family. Your circumstances offer some analogy with those existing between my family and Lord Byron in the summer of 1816. Our dwellings were close together; our mode of life was quiet and retired; it would be impossible to imagine an existence simpler than ours, less calculated to draw down the aspersions cast upon us. "These calumnies were of the most unheard-of nature,--really too infamous to permit us to treat them with disdain. Both Genevans and English established at Geneva affirmed that we were leading a life of the most unblushing profligacy. They said that we had made a compact together for outraging all held most sacred in human society. Pardon me, madam, if I spare you the details. I will only say that _incest_, _atheism_, and many other things equally ridiculous or horrible, were imputed to us. The English newspapers were not slow in propagating the scandal, and the nation lent entire faith. "Hardly any mode of annoying us was neglected. Persons living on the borders of the lake opposite Lord Byron's house made use of telescopes to spy out all his movements. An English lady fainted, or pretended to faint, with horror on seeing him enter a saloon. The most outrageous caricatures of him and his friends were circulated; and all this took place in the short period of three months. "The effect of this, on Lord Byron's mind, was most unhappy. His natural gayety abandoned him almost entirely. A man must be more or less than a stoic to bear such injuries with patience. "Do not flatter yourself, madam, with the idea, that because Englishmen acknowledge Lord Byron as the greatest poet of the day, they would therefore abstain from annoying him, and, as far as it depended on them, from persecuting him. Their admiration for his works is unwillingly extorted, and the pleasure they experience in reading them does not allay prejudice nor stop calumny. "As to the Genevans, they would not disturb him, if there were not a colony of English established in the town,--persons who have carried with them a host of mean prejudices and hatred against all those who excel or avoid them; and as these causes would continue to exist, the same effects would doubtless follow. "The English are about as numerous at Geneva as the natives, and their riches cause them to be sought after; for the Genevans, compared to their guests, are like valets, or, at best, like hotel-keepers, having let their whole town to foreigners.