“My father was a Frenchman, my lord,” said I.
“And your mother?”
“She is an Italian, sir.”
“Ah! no wonder, then, you called me an ‘English hog.’ The hatred runs in the blood; you could not help it.”
After a moment’s hesitation, he continued,—still pacing the apartment in his night linen,—“You don’t like the English, do you, my boy?”
“No,” said I, “I don’t.”
“Why?” returned Byron, quietly.
“Because my father died fighting them,” replied I.
“Then, youngster, you have a right to hate them,” said the poet, as he put me gently out of the door, and locked it on the inside.
A week after, one of the porters of my uncle’s warehouse offered to sell, at an exorbitant price, what he called “Lord Byron’s pencil,” declaring that his lordship had presented it to him. My uncle was on the eve of bargaining with the man, when he perceived his own initials on the silver. In fact, it was my lost gift. Byron, in his abstraction, had evidently mistaken the porter for myself; so the servant was rewarded with a trifling gratuity, while my virtuoso uncle took the liberty to appropriate the golden relic of Byron to himself, and put me off with the humbler remembrance of his honored name.