One quotes the passage in full because it is the earliest coloured picture of the theatrical Byron--the fatal man of gloom and splendour on whom so much limelight was presently to be thrown. Whether Byron was posing for Galt--or whether Galt magnified the pose in the light of subsequent events--it is, of course, at this date, impossible to say. Perhaps both things happened, and the picture owes a little to each of them. At all events the beginning of Byronism--of the outward, visible Byronism, that is to say--is there. It is just the picture which we feel we have a right to look for of the fatal man divining the doom which he is unable to resist--alone in the midst of the crowd--his own personality creating a void around him--proceeding to his first "passion for a married woman." That passion awaited him as soon as he landed at Malta. The woman who inspired it was Mrs. Spencer Smith--the "Florence" of "Childe Harold:" "_Sweet Florence! could another ever share This wayward, loveless heart, it would be thine._" But Mrs. Spencer Smith has a story of her own which it is worth while to turn aside and tell. CHAPTER VII FLORENCE SPENCER SMITH Mrs. Spencer Smith was the daughter of an Austrian Ambassador and the wife of an English Minister Plenipotentiary. "Married unhappily, yet has never been impeached in point of character," says Byron in a letter to his mother. There are no details forthcoming about that, however. All that one can affirm is that her husband only appears as a shadowy figure in the background of her adventures, leaving the leading _rôle_ to other men, while he serves his country at the other end of Europe. He was a younger brother of Sir Sidney Smith, who had checked Napoleon's victorious career at Acre. Napoleon, it is said by some French writers, loathed the very name of Smith after that calamity, held all the Smiths jointly and severally responsible for it, and swore to wreak his vengeance on the first Smith who fell into his hands. Consequently, the same writers add, when he heard that a Mrs. Smith was staying at Venice--a city then in his power--he felt that his long-delayed hour of triumph had come, and gave his orders accordingly. That version of the story, however, is too good to be true. Mrs. Spencer Smith, in fact, was suspected, whether rightly or wrongly, of having played some part, as a secret agent, in some conspiracy against Napoleon. She had been betrayed, or denounced; she was being watched; and she walked, unaware of her danger, into the snare that had been set. Venice, it had seemed to her, would be a safe place of refuge when the over-running of northern Italy by the French armies made it awkward for her to remain at the Baths of Valdagno, where she had been staying for the benefit of her health. Her sister, Countess Attems, lived at Venice, and she went to visit her.