"... To give you an idea of the misery existing here is beyond all expression. The town is nothing more or less than a chaos of ruins; not a house inhabitable. The fever making great havoc, people actually falling down in the streets. The stench of the place is so great I am obliged to remove my quarters to the once famous Argos, not more than an hour's walk from Agamemnon's tomb, which I have not yet seen. The scenery is beautiful; perfectly romantic. I am now living in a house without doors or windows, every man armed.
"The Commissioners are both sick. Mr. Bulwer has proposed to raise a body of fifty men, but I am afraid it will all evaporate in smoke, like all his undertakings here. I am much afraid nothing is to be done: they look on all foreigners as intruders. Many of the French have behaved most shamefully, but, as I told you before, I will exert every effort. All my hopes are placed in Colonel Gordon's arrival.
"Your Brother."
The Commissioners referred to were Henry Lytton Bulwer (Lord Dalling) and J. H. Browne, sent out by the Greek Committee in London, when it was too late, to ascertain whether the Greek Provisional Government was sufficiently firmly established, and sufficiently trustworthy, to warrant the paying over to it of that part of the loan raised in England on their behalf not already advanced. The loan was of £800,000, but from this 56.4 per cent was deducted, so that the whole amount to be forwarded to the Greek Government would be only £348,000.
Odysseus was beset with difficulties, as the Provisional Government refused to furnish him with men or money. Trelawny made vain attempts to raise funds.
Ultimately Odysseus made a truce for three months with Omer Pasha, of Negropont, but being regarded with suspicion on both sides, he endeavoured to make his escape, and left Trelawny in charge of the cave and its contents. It was at this time that Fenton, the hired spy, in May, 1825, made the attempt to assassinate Trelawny. He took the opportunity when Trelawny's back was towards him to shoot him.
Odysseus was compelled to surrender to the Government, was carried off to Athens, where he was strangled by order of Mavrocordato.
Trelawny's wounds were so dangerous that he suffered for three months before he could be said to have recovered, and he then escaped from the cavern and landed in Cephalonia in September, 1825, bringing his Albanian wife with him. During the next two years he was engaged in a lawsuit about his wife, whom he treated with brutality, so that she left him and retired to a convent, with purpose ultimately to proceed to Paxo, where lived her sister. Whilst in the convent she was delivered of a child which she sent to Trelawny to be put out to nurse, as they objected in the convent to have the infant there. Trelawny sent it to a woman who undertook to rear it, but it died, whereupon, as Mr. H. Robinson of Zante wrote to Toole on 22nd November, 1827, "he sent the dead body to the Castle Monastery, where she (his wife) was, in a box with her things and a message from him. The wife knew not what was in the box and refused to open it, and there it lay until putrid.
"An examination took place with all the fuss which the courts make about suspicione d'infanticido, and ended by T. being fined two dollars for improperly removing a dead body."