hair, and her manner was at once modest and graceful. She had
known Byron but a very short time when she found herself thrilling
with a passion of which until then she had never dreamed. It was
written of her:

She had thought of love but as an amusement; yet she now became
its slave.

To this love Byron gave an immediate response, and from that time
until his death he cared for no other woman. The two were
absolutely mated. Nevertheless, there were difficulties which
might have been expected. Count Guiccioli, while he seemed to
admire Byron, watched him with Italian subtlety. The English poet
and the Italian countess met frequently. When Byron was prostrated
by an attack of fever, the countess remained beside him, and he
was just recovering when Count Guiccioli appeared upon the scene
and carried off his wife. Byron was in despair. He exchanged the
most ardent letters with the countess, yet he dreaded assassins
whom he believed to have been hired by her husband. Whenever he
rode out, he went armed with sword and pistols.

Amid all this storm and stress, Byron's literary activity was
remarkable. He wrote some of his most famous poems at this time,
and he hoped for the day when he and the woman whom he loved might
be united once for all. This came about in the end through the
persistence of the pair. The Countess Guiccioli openly took up her
abode with him, not to be separated until the poet sailed for
Greece to aid the Greeks in their struggle for independence. This
was in 1822, when Byron was in his thirty-fifth year. He never
returned to Italy, but died in the historic land for which he gave