"Count G. has arrived in Venice, and has presented his spouse (who had preceded him two months for her health and the prescriptions of Dr. Aglietti) with a paper of conditions, regulations of hours and conduct and morals, &c., which he insists on her accepting, and she persists in refusing. I am expressly, it would seem, excluded by this treaty, as an indispensable preliminary; so that they are in high discussion, and what the result may be I know not, particularly as they are consulting friends." The view of the friends--that is to say of the Italy of the period--was that morals were of little but appearances of great importance. Married women might have lovers--one lover at a time--but their amours must be conducted in their own homes and under their husbands' patronage. By running away with their lovers they put themselves in the wrong; and the men who ran away with them showed themselves ignorant of the manners of good society; so that Countess Belzoni, who knew all about the draper's wife and the baker's wife and the promiscuous debaucheries of the Mocenigo Palace, remarked to Moore, who was passing through Venice at the time: "It is such a pity, you know. Until he did that, he had been behaving with such perfect propriety." So the debate proceeded; the girl wife and the sexagenarian husband giving each other pieces of their several minds, and the friends offering good advice to both of them, while Byron, who was excluded from the Council Chamber, sat below and wrote to Murray: "As I tell you that the Guiccioli business is on the eve of exploding in one way or the other, I will just add that, without attempting to influence the decision of the Contessa, a good deal depends upon it. If she and her husband make it up you will, perhaps, see me in England sooner than you expect; if not, I shall retire with her to France or America, change my name, and live a quiet provincial life. All this may seem odd, but I have got the poor girl into a scrape; and as neither her birth, nor her rank, nor her connections by birth or marriage are inferior to my own, I am in honour bound to support her through: besides, she is a very pretty woman--ask Moore--and not yet one and twenty." That, once again, is not the language of a man whom an invincible passion has swept off his feet. It is the language of the man who lets himself be loved rather than of the man who loves--the man who will preserve an even mind whether he retains his mistress or loses her, and whose affection for her only carries him to the point of saying that, whatever happens, at any rate he will not treat her badly. It is a point, at any rate, beyond that to which his affection for Miss Clairmont ever carried him; but it is hardly the furthest point to which it is possible for love to go. * * * * *