This change in the “way of life” meant, of course, in the first instance, the restoration of the draper’s and baker’s wives to the baker and draper respectively, and the return of the professional prostitutes to the places in which they normally plied their trade. It also meant, in the second place, the courtship of the Countess Guiccioli, a branch of the subject to be dealt with in a separate chapter.
CHAPTER XXVI
IN THE VENETIAN SALONS—INTRODUCTION TO COUNTESS GUICCIOLI
Even at the time when the draper’s and baker’s wives were quarrelling over their claims to his attentions—even at the time when the baker’s wife was routing the rest of the harem, and threatening violence with carving-knives—Byron never quite lost his foothold in the Venetian salons. There were two such salons, such as they were—that of the Countess Albrizzi, who aspired to be literary, and was styled the Venetian de Staël, and that of the Countess Benzoni, who aspired, in modern parlance, to be smart; and Byron was welcome in both of them, and could even wound the feelings of either hostess by preferring the receptions of her rival.
Both hostesses knew, of course, how he spent the time which he did not spend with them. They saw the draper’s wife in his box at the theatre; they saw the baker’s wife frolicking with him at the Carnival; they heard shocking stories of the “goings on” at the Mocenigo Palace. But they considered that these matters were not their business—or at all events did not concern them very much. They knew that English milords were mad, and that men of genius were mad; and, as Byron was both of these things, they could pardon him for possessing a double dose of eccentricity. Moreover, in a country in which most wives as well as most husbands were unfaithful, the fuss made about Lady Byron’s grievances, whatever they might be, appeared ridiculous. Why, they asked themselves, looking at the matter from their Italian view-point, could not Lady Byron take a lover and be happy instead of assuming the airs of a martyr, organising a persecution, and hiring lawyers to throw mud? And they noted, too, that Byron had picturesque ways of demonstrating that, though he followed depraved courses, he was, at the bottom of his heart, disgusted with them, and profoundly conscious of his capability of walking in sublimer paths.
“An additional proof,” says Moore, “that, in this short, daring career of libertinism, he was but desperately seeking relief for a wronged and mortified spirit, and
‘What to us seem’d guilt might be but woe,’—
is that, more than once, of an evening, when his house has been in the possession of such visitants, he has been known to hurry away in his gondola, and pass the greater part of the night upon the water, as if hating to return to his home.”