When I called on his Lordship at two o'clock, he had just left his bed-room, and was at breakfast, if it could be called one. It consisted of a cup of strong green tea, without milk or sugar, and an egg, of which he ate the yolk raw. I observed the abstemiousness of his meal.

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My digestion is weak; I am too bilious," said he, "to eat more than once a-day, and

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generally live on vegetables. To be sure I "drink two bottles of wine at dinner, but they "form only a vegetable diet. Just now I live "on claret and soda-water. You are just come "from Geneva, Shelley tells me. I passed the

"best part of the summer of 1816 at the Cam

pagna Diodati, and was very nearly passing "this last there. I went so far as to write to "Hentsh the banker; but Shelley, when he

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came to visit me at Ravenna, gave me such a

flattering account of Pisa that I changed my "mind. Then it is troublesome to travel so "far with so much live and dead stock as I do;

" and I don't like to leave behind me any of

my pets that have been accumulating since I "came on the Continent.* One cannot trust

"to strangers to take care of them. You will

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see at the farmer's some of my pea-fowls en

pension. Fletcher tells me that they are "almost as bad fellow-travellers as the mon"keyt, which I will shew you."

Here he led the way to a room, where, after playing with and caressing the creature for some time, he proposed a game of billiards.

I brought the conversation back on Switzerland and his travels, and asked him if he had been in Germany?

* He

says afterwards in " Don Juan," Canto X, St. L.:
"He had a kind of inclination, or

Weakness, for what most people deem mere vermin,
Live animals."

+ He afterwards bought another monkey in Pisa, in the street, because he saw it ill-used.

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No," said he," not even at Trieste. I "hate despotism and the Goths too much. I

have travelled little on the Continent, at least

"never gone out of my way. This is partly

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owing to the indolence of my disposition,

partly owing to my incumbrances.

I had "some idea, when at Rome, of visiting Naples, "but was at that time anxious to get back to "Venice. But Pæstum cannot surpass the "ruins of Agrigentum, which I saw by moon

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light; nor Naples, Constantinople. You "have no conception of the beauty of the "twelve islands where the Turks have their "country-houses, or of the blue Symplegades

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against which the Bosphorus beats with such "restless violence.

"Switzerland is a country I have been satis"fied with seeing once; Turkey I could live in "for ever. I never forget my predilections. I "was in a wretched state of health, and worse "spirits when I was at Geneva; but quiet and

"the lake, physicians better than Polidori, soon "set me up. I never led so moral a life as

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during my residence in that country; but I

gained no credit by it. Where there is a mor"tification, there ought to be reward. On the contrary, there is no story so absurd that they "did not invent at my cost. I was watched by

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glasses on the opposite side of the Lake, and "by glasses too that must have had very dis"torted optics. I was waylaid in my evening "drives-I was accused of corrupting all the

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grisettes in the Rue Basse. I believe that

they looked upon me as a man-monster, worse "than the piqueur.

"Somebody possessed Madame de Staël with "and opinion of my immorality. I used occa

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sionally to visit her at Coppet; and once she "invited me to a family-dinner, and I found the "room full of strangers, who had come to stare "at me as at some outlandish beast in a raree"show. One of the ladies fainted, and the rest

"looked as if his Satanic Majesty had been

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among them. Madame de Staël took the "liberty to read me a lecture before this crowd; "to which I only made her a low bow. N

Hentsh

"I knew very few of the Genevese. "was very civil to me; and I have a great re"spect for Sismondi. I was forced to return the "civilities of one of their Professors by asking “him, and an old gentleman, a friend of Gray's, "to dine with me. I had gone out to sail

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early in the morning, and the wind pre"vented me from returning in time for dinner. "I understand that I offended them mortally. "Polidori did the honours. Among our coun“trymen I made no new acquaintances; Shel"ley, Monk Lewis, and Hobhouse were almost "the only English people I saw. No wonder "I shewed a distaste for society at that time, "and went little among the Genevese; be"sides, I could not speak French. What is

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become of my boatmau and boat? I suppose