He meant it--and yet he did not mean it. It was the emphasised and exaggerated expression of what he meant--momentarily emphasised for the purpose, whether conscious or unconscious, of relieving himself from the black mood which had descended on him. The relief was gained--though it was not to be permanent. He did not "leave England for ever"--not yet--but hied him to the haunts of the world as he had promised. He plunged into pleasure--and found pleasure more pleasant than he had imagined that it could be. That was inevitable. He was only twenty-four, and he was famous; and "to be famous when one is young--that is the dream of the gods." Moreover, he was achieving just that sort of fame which is attended by the most intoxicating joy. The fame of the man of science is nothing--the world interests itself in his discovery but not in him. The fame of a statesman is hardly sweeter--it is only won by fighting and working hard and making jealous enemies. The fame of a poet--a poet who is also _the_ poet--brings instantaneously the applause of men and the wonder and homage of women. They do not separate the man from his work, but insist on associating him with it. Beautiful women as well as blue-stockings--and with less critical discrimination than blue-stockings--prostrate and abase themselves before him, competing for the sunshine of his smiles, believing, or affecting to believe, that his and theirs are kindred souls. So it befell Byron. Born in exile, he had at last returned from exile in a blaze of triumph. All the doors of all the best houses were thrown open to him with a blare of trumpets. He entered them, not as a parvenu, like Moore the Irish grocer's son, but as the one man without whose presence the festival would have been incomplete. No man, if one might judge by externals, had ever a better chance of making a splendid and noble pageant of his life. So far as an observer could judge--so far probably as he himself knew--the ghosts of the past were laid, and its memories in a fair way of being effaced. If the past had not come back to him, he might have forgotten it. The tragedy of his life was that it did come back--that he did meet Mary Chaworth again and rediscover the secret orchard which, while she was absent from it, was a howling wilderness, overgrown with weeds. But not quite immediately. There were certain other things which had to happen first. CHAPTER XI LADY CAROLINE LAMB The record of Byron's social triumphs may be outlined in a few sentences.