From Verona, too, he wrote on the same day to his sister, saying, after compliments and small-talk: "I am also growing _grey_ and _giddy_, and cannot help thinking my head will decay; I wish my memory would, at least my remembrance." All of which seems to show Byron defiant, but not yet reckless, preferring, if not actually enjoying, the society of his equals, and still paying a very proper regard to appearances. The change occurred when he got to Venice and Hobhouse left him there. Then there was a moral collapse, just as if a moral support had been withdrawn--a collapse of which the first outward sign was a new kind of intrigue. Hitherto his amours had been with his social equals; and the daughters of the people had, since his celebrity, had very little attraction for him. Now the decline begins--a decline which was to conduct him to very degraded depths; and our first intimation of it is in a letter written to Moore within a week of his arrival. He begins with a comment on the decay of Venice--"I have been familiar with ruins too long to dislike desolation"--and he proceeds: "Besides, I have fallen in love, which next to falling into the canal (which would be of no use as I can swim), is the best or the worst thing I could do. I have got some extremely good apartments in the house of a 'Merchant of Venice,' who is a good deal occupied with business, and has a wife in her twenty-second year. Marianna (that is her name) is in her appearance altogether like an antelope.... Her features are regular and rather aquiline--mouth small--skin clear and soft, with a kind of hectic colour--forehead remarkably good: her hair is of the dark gloss, curl, and colour of Lady Jersey's: her figure is light and pretty, and she is a famous songstress." And so on at some length. Our only other witness to Marianna's charms and character--a manuscript note to Moore's Life quoted in Murray's edition of the Letters--describes her as "a demon of avarice and libidinousness who intrigued with every resident in the house and every guest who visited it." It is possible--it is even probable--that this description, made from a different point of view than Byron's, fits her. Byron's enthusiasm was for her physical, not her moral, attributes; and it does not appear that he was under any illusion as to the latter. The former, however, fascinated him; and we find him dwelling on them, in letter after letter, to Murray as well as Moore--the publisher, indeed, being the first recipient of the confidence that "Our little arrangement is completed; the usual oaths having been taken, and everything fulfilled according to the 'understood relations' of such liaisons." Which means, very clearly, that the draper's wife has become the poet's mistress, with the knowledge of her husband, and to his pecuniary advantage.