"I am bound by the indissoluble ties of marriage to _one_ who will _not_ live with me, and live with one to whom I cannot give a legal right to be my companion, and who, wanting that right, is placed in a position humiliating to her and most painful to me. Were the Countess Guiccioli and I married, we should, I am sure, be cited as an example of conjugal happiness, and the domestic and retired life we lead would entitle us to respect. But our union, wanting the legal and religious part of the ceremony of marriage, draws on us both censure and blame. She is formed to make a good wife to any man to whom she attaches herself. She is fond of retirement, is of a most affectionate disposition, and noble-minded and disinterested to the highest degree. Judge then how mortifying it must be to me to be the cause of placing her in a false position. All this is not thought of when people are blinded by passion, but when passion is replaced by better feelings--those of affection, friendship, and confidence--when, in short, the _liaison_ has all of marriage but its forms, then it is that we wish to give it the respectability of wedlock." Such is the report, confirming the view that the ardour of Byron's passion had by this time burnt itself out, and exhibiting him in the novel light of a lover tired of love-making but desirous of domestication. The desire does, at times, overtake even the most disorderly; and it is credible enough that Byron had come to entertain it. He had entertained it once before, on the eve of his marriage; and it is the kind of desire that recurs even after the first experiments have proved unsatisfactory. So it was with Byron, the wife, and not the estate of matrimony, being held responsible for the failure; only the desire was not, in his case, the ruling passion. That passion was to do something, and to be seen doing it, the second condition being as essential as the first, in defence of the victims of the Holy Alliance or any other tyranny. It was a passion destined very soon to be gratified, the end coming in a dismal swamp, but in a blaze of glory. We will tell the story--or as much of it as needs to be told--in a moment; but we must first attend Byron a little longer on the trivial round--riding out to the inn, and shooting at a mark, and riding home again--in order that we may note how certain deaths and other incidents aided and threw light upon the further development of his character. CHAPTER XXX FROM PISA TO GENOA