From the third day of his arrival Byron had provided himself, as he liked to boast, with a gondola and a mistress. The mistress was Marianna Segati, wife of a cloth-merchant, who was the poet’s landlord, for he had let rooms to Byron in his house. A most imprudent proceeding, but the cloth-business was doing badly. Marianna was twenty-two, had splendid black eyes, and a delicious voice. Although belonging to the middle classes, she was received by the aristocracy of Venice on account of her singing. That she should lose her heart to the noble lord who was as generous as he was handsome, and who lived under the same roof, was as inevitable as are the simplest chemical reactions. As to the Merchant of Venice, Byron was free with his ducats, and Venetian morals always permitted one lover. Mrs. Hoppner, a friendly little woman with intelligent eyes, had told this story with that mixture of Christian sorrow and mundane relish which the virtuous employ in talking of the vicious. Her husband, with many hums and haws, added that this was not all. The Venetian populace circulated a tale that somewhere in the city the English Lord had a closed villa, in which, one Muse not sufficing him, he had gathered together the whole Nine. A legendary history was growing up concerning Byron, and the travelling British spoke with bated breath of Nero and Heliogabalus. The lower classes adored him, and at Carnival time the women took advantage of their masks and dominoes to hook themselves on to his person.
Such gossip was far from reassuring to Claire. She asked what ought she to do? The Consul advised her above all things not to let Byron suspect she was in Venice, for he often expressed his extreme horror of her arrival.
At three o’clock Shelley went to the Palazzo Mocenigo to call on Byron, who was delighted to see him, Shelley being perhaps the only man in the world with whom Byron would talk seriously and as crowned head to crowned head. Even when told of the reason for Shelley’s journey, and Claire’s great desire to see the child again, he remained calm and reasonable. He said he understood perfectly Claire’s anxiety, but that he could not send Allegra back to her, because the Venetians who already accused him of capriciousness, would say he had grown tired of her. However, he would think the matter over, and find some way to arrange everything. On which, he invited Shelley to go for a ride with him along the Lido.
The gondola took them across the lagoon, and they disembarked on the long, sandy island which defends Venice from the Adriatic. Nothing grows here but sea-wrack and thistle. They found Byron’s horses waiting for them. Shelley loved all wild and solitary places, and this gallop along the edge of the sea was delightful to him. Only the knowledge that Claire, at the Hoppners’, anxiously awaited his return, spoiled his pleasure.
Byron inveighed against the stupidity of the English. Those who came to Venice persecuted him with their curiosity, and even offered money to his servants to allow them to see his bedroom. Then he spoke of Shelley’s own misfortunes with many protestations of friendship. “Had I been in England at the time of the Chancery affair, I would have moved heaven and earth to get you back your children.”
This led him on to speak of the wickedness of humanity which he judged to be infinite. “Men are filled with hatred of one another, to expect or hope for anything else is the mark of the visionary.”
“Why?” asked Shelley. “You appear to believe that man is the victim of his instincts without being able to direct them. . . . My faith is quite different. I think that our will creates our virtue. . . . And though wickedness may be natural that does not prove it to be invincible.”
Byron pointed out the patrician city that the setting sun suffused with gold and sombre purple. “Let us get into the gondola again,” he said, “I want to show you something.” When they had glided for some moments over the lagoon, “Look over to the west. Don’t you hear the clang of a bell?”
Shelley, looking, saw on a small island a windowless, deformed, and dreary building, and on the top of it an open tower in which a bell swung in black relief against the crimson sky. With the splash of the oars seemed to mingle distant, stifled cries for help.
“That,” Byron said, “is the madhouse. Every evening when I cross the water at this hour, I hear the bell clanging the maniacs to vespers.”