But this was an Arcadian state of things too good to last. Exactly how or why it came to an end one does not know; but probably because, while the Countess was too vehemently in love to control the expression of her feelings, Byron's European importance overshadowed her husband, made him feel foolish, and challenged him to assert himself. Whatever the reason, the arrangement only remained idyllic for about four months, and then, in May 1821, there began to be talk of divorce, "on account of our having been taken together _quasi_ in the fact, and, what is worse, that she does not _deny_ it." She was so far from denying it, indeed, that she protested that it was a shame that she should be the only woman in Romagna who was not allowed to have a lover, and declared that, unless her husband did allow her to have a lover, she would not live with him. Her family took her part, saying that her husband, having tolerated her infidelity for so long, had forfeited, his right to make a fuss about it. The ladies of Ravenna, and the populace, also made the business theirs, and supported the lovers, on general principles, because they were of the age for love and the husband was not, and also because Count Guiccioli was an unpleasant person and unpopular. He was, indeed, not only unpleasant and unpopular, but also reputed to be a desperate and dangerous character, careful, indeed, of his own elderly skin, but quite capable of hiring bravos to assassinate those who crossed his path. "Warning was given me," Byron writes to Moore, "not to take such long rides in the Pine Forest without being on my guard;" and again: "The principal security is that he has not the courage to spend twenty scudi--the average price of a clean-handed bravo--otherwise there is no want of opportunity, for I ride about the woods every evening, with one servant, and sometimes an acquaintance, who latterly looks a little queer in solitary bits of bushes." The peril of violence may have been the greater because the Count could not find a lawyer willing to take up his case; the advocates declining, as one man, to act for him on the ground that he was either a fool or a knave--a fool if he had been unaware of the liaison and a knave if he had connived at it and "waited for some bad end to divulge it." The stiletto, however, remained in its sheath, and the matter, after all, was settled in the Courts. The Countess, supported by her family, applied for the separation which she had previously resisted; and the Count, on his part, resisted the separation which he had previously demanded, raising particular objections to the claim that he should pay alimony.