brilliancy, and then nothing but blackness with rolling thunder. These
letters are addressed to Peacock, but in them we have no reference to
the intimacy with Byron now being carried on; how he arrived at the
Hotel Secheron, nor their removal to the Maison Chapuis to avoid the
inquisitive English.

There is, fortunately, no further reason to refer to the rumours which
scandal-mongers promulgated--rumours which undoubtedly hastened the
rupture between Byron and Claire; although evil rumours, like fire
smouldering in a hold, are difficult to extinguish, and, as Mr.
Jeaffreson shows, the slanders of this time were afterwards a trouble
to Shelley at Ravenna, in 1821, when his wife had to take his part.
These rumours were the source of certain poems, and also, later,
stories about Byron. All lovers of Shelley owe a debt of deep
gratitude to Mr. Jeaffreson, who, although, severe to a fault on many
of the blemishes in his character (as if he considered that poets
ought to be almost superhuman in all things), nevertheless proves in
so clear a way the utter groundlessness of the rumours as to relieve
all future biographers from considering the subject. At the same time
he shows how distasteful Claire's presence must have become to Byron,
who was hoping for reconciliation with his wife, and who naturally
construed fresh obduracy on her part as the result of reports that
were becoming current. Anyway, it is manifest that Byron did not
regard Claire in the light that Mary may have hoped for--namely, that
he would consider her as a wife, taking the place of her who had left
him. Byron had no such new idea of the nature of a wife, but only
accepted Claire as she allowed herself to be taken, with the addition
that he grew to dislike her intensely.

So after Shelley and Byron had made their eight days' tour of the