indulgent lord but the spending of a few thousands in adding to its
splendours by new and costly furnishings. Here she spent two-and-a-half
years of ideal happiness, sailing by moonlight on the lovely bay, with
d'Orsay for companion; visiting all the sights, from Pompeii to the
galleries and museums, with a retinue of experts, such as Herschell and
Gell in her train, and entertaining with a queenly magnificence Italian
nobles and all the great ones of Europe who passed through Naples.

From Naples Lady Blessington took her train to Florence, where she cast
her spell over Walter Savage Landor, who spent every possible hour in
her fascinating company; and where she was joined by her husband's
daughter, the Lady Harriet Gardiner, a girl of fifteen, who, within a
few weeks of reaching Italy, became the wife of my lady's handsome
protege, d'Orsay. And it was not until 1828, six years after leaving
London, that the stately procession turned its face homewards, halting
for a few months of farewell magnificence in Paris, where Lady
Blessington was installed in Marshal Ney's mansion, in an environment
even more gorgeous than the Palazzo Belvidere of Naples could boast,
thanks to the prodigality of her infatuated lord.

The description which her Ladyship gives of her Paris palace reads,
indeed, like a passage from the "Arabian Nights."

"The bed," she says, "which is silvered instead of gilt,
rests on the backs of two large silver swans, so
exquisitely sculptured that every feather is in
alto-relievo, and looks nearly as fleecy as those of a
living bird. The recess in which it is placed, is lined
with white fluted silk, bordered with blue embossed lace;
and from the columns that support the frieze of the