His case was prejudiced from the first by the dissemination of an atrocious libel. When a patient alleges scandalous behaviour between doctor and nurse, it is well to be sure of the witness’s mental condition. Now Musset was suffering, not, as Pagello politely put it, from typhoid fever, but from _delirium tremens_. This would at once disqualify him as an eye-witness. But the fact is Musset himself never made the allegation; the story was spread about by brother Paul, a terrible liar. Pagello had been called in first to attend not Alfred, but George herself, for severe headache. Half a century later he remembered that her lips were thick and ugly, and her teeth discoloured by the cigarettes she was perpetually smoking; but she charmed him by her wonderful eyes: _per gli occhi stupendi_. After they had both nursed Alfred to convalescence the _occhi stupendi_ made short work with the young doctor. In the common phrase, George threw herself at him. People who don’t study the facts talk of the new arrangement as though it were a betrayal; but observe that it was of the highest convenience not only to George, but to Alfred. It enabled the poet to get away alone to Paris with an easier conscience; it provided George, compelled to stay on in Venice to complete her tale of “copy,” with a protector. But we are in 1834, with romanticism at its most ecstatic and “sublime.” So the convenience of the situation is draped in phrases and bedewed with tears. Alfred shed them with enthusiasm, while Pagello swore to him to look after the happiness of George. “Il nostro amore per Alfredo” was Pagello’s delightful way of putting it. A singular trio! Evidently poor Pagello was George’s slave. What was a poor young Venetian medical gentleman to do? A foreign lady with _occhi stupendi_ (and a habit of writing eight or nine hours a day on end) handed over to him, with tears of enthusiasm, by a grateful patient! Anyhow, Pagello showed his sense by removing the lady to cheaper lodgings. When Venice grew a little too hot he escorted her on a trip to Tirol, taking her on the way (such were the pleasing manners of the time) to see his father! He was a little short with me, says the son, but he received her with _cortesi ospitalita_, and the pair discussed French literature. Mr. Max Beerbohm should draw the picture.