Ugliness has its compensations, thought I. Nobody makes such a fuss over
a pretty girl at home (they are not so uncommon), and I will never bring
one to Paris again. Thank Heaven! we are going to Italy soon.

* * * * *

The piercing Tramontane came down upon us in the Bay of Naples with so
fierce a blast that we doubted if we were not in Iceland, and were glad
to make our escape to Rome, where we found an asylum in the Hôtel de
Minerve, not far from the Pantheon. Many of the old palaces and convents
of Italy have been transformed into hotels. This was the ancient palace
of the princes of Conti. I was so captivated by the superb dining-room
that the quality of the dinners made but a faint impression. What! eat
in the presence of all those marble goddesses, looking down upon us,
serene and cold, as if from their thrones on the starry Olympus! Or if I
turned my eyes resolutely away from Juno, Ceres and Minerva, they were
sure to be snared by the dancing-girls of Pompeii stepping out from the
frescoed walls, or inextricably entangled in the lovely garlands of
fruit and flowers that wound their mazy way along the borders.

One evening, while we were waiting for one of the endless courses of a
table-d'hôte dinner, my wandering eyes were caught by the most perfect
human head I had ever seen. It seemed that of the youthful Lord Byron,
so well known in busts and engravings--the same small head with high
forehead and clustering dark-brown curls, the perfectly-moulded chin,
the full, ripe beauty of the lips. The eyes were a deep blue, but I
thought them black at first, they were so darkly shaded by the thick
black lashes. I am convinced that Byron must have had just such eyes,
for some of his biographers describe them as black and others as blue.
When he rose from the table I saw a slight, well-knit figure of