"How many more blows do you mean to give Robert?"
"What business is it of yours?" retorted the combatant. "Why do you ask such a question?"
"Because, if you please, executioner, I will take half the blows you intend for him and will return them to you later, you understand, when I am bigger."
After Harrow, the young man went to finish his education at the University of Cambridge; but he was ever impatient of regular study, just as he was of ordinary modes of enjoyment: the only thing he learnt was how to swim; his only recreation was the training of a bear.
In 1806, when he was eighteen, he joined his mother at Newstead. The relations between mother and son were not at all of a tender nature; on the contrary, the two were nearly always quarrelling. One of these quarrels even went so far one day that each in turn called at a chemist's, within five minutes of one another, to inquire if he had sold the other poison, and, on being told not, begged him not to do so. Besides little Mary Duff, with whom he fell in love when he was nine, Byron conceived a passion when he was twelve for his cousin, Miss Parker, for whom he composed his first verses. They were lost, and the poet never remembered what they were. Miss Parker died, and gave place to Miss Chaworth, the daughter of the man whom old Lord Byron had killed. But this time it was the real passion of budding manhood, tender and deep, and it left its mark for the rest of his life. Miss Chaworth was beautiful, charming in manner and wealthy.
"Alas!" said Byron, "our union would have wiped out the recollection of the blood shed between our fathers; it would have reunited two rich estates and two beings who would have agreed well enough together, and then—and then—Ah, well, God knows what might have happened!"
But Byron was lame; he was obliged to avoid all kinds of exercise that could expose his deformity, and consequently dancing. Now Miss Chaworth was particularly fond of dancing, and Byron would stand, leaning against a corner by the door or against the chimneypiece, his arms crossed, frowning, with his lips curled with anger, whilst the music carried far away from him the girl he loved, some dancer more lucky than he leading her through the figures of a quadrille or guiding her in the whirl of a valse. Once, someone said to Mary Chaworth—
"Do you know that Byron seems deeply in love with you?"
"Well, what does it matter to me?" replied Mary.