1831.J Byron's Memoir a. 155 



my countenance, for if I began in a rage, she always finished by making me 

 laugh with some Venetian pantaloonery or other, and the gipsy knew this 

 well enough, as well as her other powers of persuasion, and exerted them 

 with the usual tact and success of all she-things high and low ; they are all 

 alike for that. 



" Madame Benzoni also took her under her protection, and then her head 

 turned. She was always in extremes, either crying or laughing, and so fierce 

 when angered, that she was the terror of men, women, and children for she 

 had the strength of an Amazon, with the temper of Medea. She was a fine 

 animal, but quite untameable. I was the only person that could at all keep 

 her m any order; and when she saw me really angry (which they tell me is a 

 savage sight,) she subsided. But she had a thousand fooleries. In her faz- 

 ziolo, the dress of the lower orders, she looked beautiful; but alas, she longed 

 for a hat and feathers ; and all I could say or do, (and I said much,) could not 

 prevent this travestie. I put the first in the fire ; but I got tired of burning 

 them before she did of buying them, so that she made herself a figure, for they 

 did not at all become her. 



" In the mean time, she beat the women, and stopped my letters. I found 

 her one day pondering over one. She used to try to find out by their shape, 

 whether they were feminine or no; and she used to lament her ignorance, and 

 actually studied her alphabet, on purpose, as she declared, to open all letters 

 addressed to me, and read their contents. 



" That she had a sufficient regard for me in her wild way, I had many 

 reasons to believe. I will mention one : In the autumn one day, going to 

 the Lido with my gondoliers, we were overtaken by a heavy squall, and the 

 gondola put in peril hats blown away, boat filling, oar lost, tumbling sea, 

 thunder, rain in torrents, night coming, and wind unceasing. On our return, 

 after a tight struggle, I found her on the open steps of the Mocenigo palace, 

 on the Grand Canal, with her great black eyes flashing through her tears, 

 and her long, dark hair streaming, drenched with rain, over her brows and 

 breast. She was perfectly exposed to the storm ; and the wind blowing her 

 hair and dress about her thin tall figure, and the lightning flashing round her, 

 and the waves rolling at her feet, made her look like Medea, alighted from her 

 chariot ; or the sybil of the tempest that was rolling around her, the only 

 living thing within hail at that moment, except ourselves. On seeing me safe, 

 she did not wait to greet me, as might have been expected, but calling to me, 

 'Ah! can' della Madonna cosa vus tu ? Esto non e tempo per andar' al 

 Lido/ (Ah ! dog of the Virgin ! what are you about, this is no time to go to 

 Lido?) ran into her house, and solaced herself with scolding the boatmen for 

 not foreseeing the ' temporale.' 



" I was told by the servants, that she had only been prevented from coming 

 in a boat to look after me, by the refusal of all the gondoliers of the canal to 

 put out into the harbour in such a moment ; that then she sat down on the 

 steps in all the thickest of the squall, and would neither be removed nor com- 

 forted. Pier joy at seeing me again was moderately mixed with ferocity, and 

 gave me the idea of a tigress over her recovered cubs. 



" But her reign drew near a close. She became quite ungovernable some 

 months after ; and a concurrence of complaints, some true and many false 

 ' a favourite has no friends' determined me to part with her. I told her 

 quietly she must return home. She had acquired a sufficient provision for 

 herself and her mother in my service. She refused to quit the house. I was 

 firm ; and she went, threatening knives and revenge. I told her that I had 

 seen knives drawn before her time, and that if she chose to begin, there was 

 a knife, and fork also, at her service on the table : and that intimidation 

 would not do. The next day. while I was at dinner, she walked in (having 

 broken open a glass door that led from the hall to the staircase, by way of 

 prologue), and advancing straight up to the table, snatched the knife from my 

 hand, cutting me slightly in the thumb in the operation. Whether she meant 

 to use this against herself or me, I know not ; probably against neither ; but 

 Fletcher seized her by the arms, and disarmed her. I then called my boat- 



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