But he could not help it. His heart was out of his keeping, and he could not give what he did not possess. A "passade" was all that he was capable of just then; but that this "passade" did really help him to feel his feet again in stormy waters, and bring him back once more to cheerfulness and self-respect, is amply proved, first by the change of tone which appears in his more intimate writings, and then by the new, and worse, way of life into which we see him falling after the curtain has been rung down on the episode. Shelley departed, taking Miss Clairmont and her sister with him, sorely, as there is reason to believe, against the former's wish, towards the end of August; the honeymoon, such as it was, having lasted about three months. Towards the end of the time, visitors began to arrive--"Monk" Lewis, and "Conversation" Sharp, and Scrope Davies, and Hobhouse--but most particularly Hobhouse who wrote Mrs. Leigh a reassuring letter to the effect that her brother was "living with the strictest attention to decorum, and free from all offence, either to God or man or woman," having given up brandy and late hours and "quarts of magnesia" and "deluges of soda-water," and appearing to be "as happy as it is consistent for a man of honour and common feeling to be after the occurrence of a calamity involving a charge, whether just or unjust, against his honour and his feeling." That was written on September 9; and it approximated to the truth. Having despatched his report, Hobhouse took Byron for the tour already referred to--over the Col de Jaman, down the Simmenthal to Thun, up the Lake of Thun to Interlaken, and thence to Lauterbrunnen, Grindelwald, Brienz, and back by way of Berne, Fribourg, and Yverdon. Byron kept a journal of the journey for his sister to peruse. In the main it is merely a record, admirably written, of things seen; but now and again the diarist speaks out and shows how exactly his companion had read and interpreted his mind. "It would be a great injustice," Hobhouse had continued to Mrs. Leigh, in reference to the "calamity" and the "charge," "to suppose that he has dismissed the subject from his thoughts, or indeed from his conversation, upon any other motive than that which the most bitter of his enemies would commend. The uniformly guarded and tranquil manner shows the effort which it is meant to hide." And there are just two passages in the Diary in which we see the tranquil manner breaking down. In the first place at Grindelwald: "Starlight, beautiful, but a devil of a path. Never mind, got safe in; a little lightning; but the whole of the day as fine in point of weather as the day on which Paradise was made. Passed _whole woods of withered pines, all withered_; trunks stripped and barkless, branches lifeless; done by a single winter--their appearance reminded me of me and my family." In the second place, at the very end of the tour: