The risk, though inglorious in itself, was nevertheless the price of glory; and he paid it willingly. He was, once more, as famous as at the hour when "Childe Harold" had suddenly revealed his genius, and the fame which he now tasted was of a worthier kind. Then he had dazzled and fascinated. Now he enjoyed the love and admiration, not merely of idle women, but of a whole people, and discovered that he had the power to heal feuds and to lead men. He might, or might not, live to wear, or to refuse, a kingly crown; but at least he had lived to be hailed as the Liberator of a nation, and to be revered accordingly. An anecdote preserved by Parry, the artificer who was serving under him in charge of the arsenal, illustrates the adoration of the peasantry: "Byron one day," Parry relates, "returned from his ride more than usually pleased. An interesting country-woman, with a fine family, had come out of her cottage and presented him with a curd cheese and some honey, and could not be persuaded to accept payment for it. 'I have felt,' he said, 'more pleasure this day, and at this circumstance, than for a long time past.'" Such was the homage paid to him, by the humble as well as the great; but it soon became increasingly evident that though he had achieved the glory, death was to rob him of the crown. He began to have epileptic seizures; and in the midst of them, there was trouble with the Suliotes. There were only five hundred of them, and they preferred the insolent claim that one hundred and fifty of them should be promoted to be officers, and that the rest should be accorded a month's pay in advance. Colonel Stanhope tells us how he quelled the mutiny: "Soon after his dreadful paroxysm, when he was lying on his sick-bed, while his whole nervous system completely shaken, the mutinous Suliotes, covered with dirt and splendid attire, broke into his apartment, brandishing their costly arms, and loudly demanding their rights. Lord Byron electrified by this unexpected act, seemed to recover from his sickness, and the more the Suliotes raged, the more his calm courage triumphed. The scene was truly sublime." The mutineers suppressed, the doctors came and bled him. He pulled through, whether in consequence of their treatment or in spite of it; but his regimen and his mode of life were not such as to restore him to vigour. He was sweeping away the coats of his stomach by large and frequent doses of powerful purgative medicaments; and in the intervals between the purges he partook freely of a comfortable and potent kind of punch which Parry mixed for him. It is no wonder, therefore, that relapse succeeded relapse and that just at that hour at which fortune seemed beginning to smile upon the Greeks, his life could be seen to be ebbing away.