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Journal of the conversations of Lord Byron
Journal of the conversations of Lord Byron Author:Thomas Medwin Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: " gers of sixty made love to me.—But to return to the " Guiccioli. The old Count did not object to her availing " herself of the privileges of her country; an It... more »alian would " have reconciled him to the thing : indeed for some tune " he winked at our intimacy, but at length made an excep- " tion against me, as a foreigner, a heretic, an Englishman, " and, what was worse than all, a liberal. " He insisted—the Guiccioli was as obstinate; her family " took her part. Catholics cannot get divorces. But, to " the scandal of all Romagna, the matter was at length " referred to the Pope, who ordered her a separate main- " tenance, on condition that she should reside under her " father's roof. All this was not agreeable, and at length I " was forced to smuggle her out of Ravenna, having dis- " closed a plot laid with the sanction of the Legate for " shutting her up in a convent for life, which she narrowly " escaped.—Except Greece, I was never so attached to any " place in my life as to Ravenna, and but for the failure of " the Constitutionalists and this fracas, should probably " never have left it. The peasantry are the best people " in the world, and the beauty of their women is extraor- " dinary. Those at Tivoli and Frescati, who are so much" vaunted, are mere Sabines, coarse creatures, compared to " the Romagnese. You may talk of your English women, " and it is true that out of one hundred Italians and Eng- " lish you will find thirty of the latter handsome; but then ' there will be one Italian on the other side of the scale, " who will more than balance the deficit in numbers—one " who, like the Florence Venus, has no rival, and can have " none in the North. I have learnt more from the pea- " santry of the countries I have travelled in than from " any other source, especially from t...« less