“The people liked me as much as they hated the government.  It is not a little to say, I was popular with all the leaders of the constitutional party.  They knew that I came from a land of liberty, and wished well to their cause.  I would have espoused it, too, and assisted them to shake off their fetters.  They knew my character, for I had been living two years at Venice, where many of the Ravennese have houses.  I did not, however, take part in their intrigues, nor join in their political coteries; but I had a magazine of one hundred stand of arms in the house, when everything was ripe for revolt——a curse on Carignan’s imbecility!  I could have pardoned him that, too, if he had not impeached his partisans.

“The proscription was immense in Romagna, and embraced many of the first nobles: almost all my friends, among the rest the Gambas (the father and brother of the Countess Guiccioli), who took no part in the affair, were included in it.  They were exiled, and their possessions confiscated.  They knew that this must eventually drive me out of the country.  I did not follow them immediately: I was not to be bullied—I had myself fallen under the eye of the government.  If they could have got sufficient proof they would have arrested me.”

The latter part of this declaration bears, in my opinion, indubitable marks of being genuine.  It has that magnifying mysticism about it which more than any other quality characterized Lord Byron’s intimations concerning himself and his own affairs; but it is a little clearer than I should have expected in the acknowledgment of the part he was preparing to take in the insurrection.  He does not seem here to be sensible, that in confessing so much, he has justified the jealousy with which he was regarded.

“Shortly after the plot was discovered,” he proceeds to say, “I received several anonymous letters, advising me to discontinue my forest rides; but I entertained no apprehensions of treachery, and was more on horseback than ever.  I never stir out without being well armed, nor sleep without pistols.  They knew that I never missed my aim; perhaps this saved me.”