"So Madame Albrizzi's death is in danger—poor woman! Moore told me that at Geneva they had made a devil of a story of the Fornaretta:—'Young lady seduced!—subsequent abandonment!—leap into the Grand Canal!'—and her being in the 'hospital of fous in consequence!' I should like to know who was nearest being made 'fou,' and be d——d to them I Don't you think me in the interesting character of a very ill used gentleman? I hope your little boy is well. Allegrina is flourishing like a pomegranate blossom. Yours," &c.
LETTER 346. TO MR. MURRAY.
"Venice, November 8. 1819.
"Mr. Hoppner has lent me a copy of 'Don Juan,' Paris edition, which he tells me is read in Switzerland by clergymen and ladies with considerable approbation. In the second Canto, you must alter the 49th stanza to
"'Twas twilight, and the sunless day went down
Over the waste of waters, like a veil
Which if withdrawn would but disclose the frown
Of one whose hate is mask'd but to assail;
Thus to their hopeless eyes the night was shown,
And grimly darkled o'er their faces pale
And the dim desolate deep; twelve days had Fear
Been their familiar, and now Death was here.
"I have been ill these eight days with a tertian fever, caught in the country on horseback in a thunderstorm. Yesterday I had the fourth attack: the two last were very smart, the first day as well as the last being preceded by vomiting. It is the fever of the place and the season. I feel weakened, but not unwell, in the intervals, except headach and lassitude.
"Count Guiccioli has arrived in Venice, and has presented his spouse (who had preceded him two months for her health and the prescriptions of Dr. Aglietti) with a paper of conditions, regulations of hours and conduct, and morals, &c. &c. &c. which he insists on her accepting, and she persists in refusing. I am expressly, it should seem, excluded by this treaty, as an indispensable preliminary; so that they are in high dissension, and what the result may be I know not, particularly as they are consulting friends.
"To-night, as Countess Guiccioli observed me poring over 'Don Juan,' she stumbled by mere chance on the 137th stanza of the first Canto, and asked me what it meant. I told her, 'Nothing—but "your husband is coming."' As I said this in Italian, with some emphasis, she started up in a fright, and said, 'Oh, my God, is he coming?' thinking it was her own, who either was or ought to have been at the theatre. You may suppose we laughed when she found out the mistake. You will be amused, as I was;—it happened not three hours ago.
"I wrote to you last week, but have added nothing to the third Canto since my fever, nor to 'The Prophecy of Dante.' Of the former there are about 100 octaves done; of the latter about 500 lines—perhaps more. Moore saw the third Juan, as far as it then went. I do not know if my fever will let me go on with either, and the tertian lasts, they say, a good while. I had it in Malta on my way home, and the malaria fever in Greece the year before that. The Venetian is not very fierce, but I was delirious one of the nights with it, for an hour or two, and, on my senses coming back, found Fletcher sobbing on one side of the bed, and La Contessa Guiccioli[60] weeping on the other; so that I had no want of attendance. I have not yet taken any physician, because, though I think they may relieve in chronic disorders, such as gout and the like, &c. &c. &c. (though they can't cure them)—just as surgeons are necessary to set bones and tend wounds—yet I think fevers quite out of their reach, and remediable only by diet and nature.