119 



CHAP. XXXIX. 



SPOET I>^ SARBIXIA. A PISCirLE OF ST. HTTBEKT. AX lETSH 



EEXEG.VBE. — COMJIEXCrNG OPERATIONS. — KING VICTOR EM- 

 MANUEL. — A PLEASANT PARTY. — A BOAR HUNT. — GOOD SPORT. 



AN ACCIDENT. — A STAG FOR A GUN. — THE MrFFLON. — PRO- 



DrCE OF SARDINIA. MALVOSIA DE BUDA. — THE VENDETTA. — 



BANDITTI. — DEPARTURE. 



" Adieu, ye joys of La Yalette, 

 Adieu, sirocco, sun, and sweat ; 

 Adieu, ye cursed sti-eets and stairs, 

 (How surely he M^ho mounts them sweai's ! ") — Byeox.* 



" I hate to learn the ebb of time. 

 From you dull steeple's drowsy chime; 

 Or mark it as the sunbeams crawl 

 Inch after inch along the wall." — Ladij of the LaJce. 



WnEX writing respecting quails and quail shooting at 

 ^lalta, I mentioned, that after waiting with the greatest 

 impatience for an invitation to Sardinia, I at length em- 

 barked from Malta at the end of October 1810, on a 

 shooting expedition to that island. In the preceding 



* Lord Byron arrived at Malta in a transport that was sent to Athens 

 to bring dowaa Lord Elgin's Marbles. Three of&eers of my regiment 

 had gone in this vessel to see the ruins, and our doctor, one of the party, 

 became extremely intimate with Lord Byron, who was taken ill on the 

 passage. On his lordship's arrival at Malta he became an honorary 

 member of oiu- mess, and I foiuid him the character I had always heard 

 of him : at times he was in the highest spirits, and would sit drinking till 

 one or two o'clock in the morning; at other periods gloomy and desponding, 

 as if he was going to be hung at Tyburn. He had, as the Scotch say, 

 " a bee in his bonnet." 



