ipe and
rich at every door. The merchants were truly hospitable, and few
more so than Mr Chabot. As I had letters to him, he invited me to
dinner, along with several other friends previously engaged. In the
cool of the evening, as we were sitting at our wine, Lord Byron and
Mr Hobhouse were announced. His Lordship was in better spirits than
I had ever seen him. His appearance showed, as he entered the room,
that they had met with some adventure, and he chuckled with an inward
sense of enjoyment, not altogether without spleen--a kind of
malicious satisfaction--as his companion recounted with all becoming
gravity their woes and sufferings, as an apology for begging a bed
and morsel for the night. God forgive me! but I partook of Byron's
levity at the idea of personages so consequential wandering destitute
in the streets, seeking for lodgings, as it were, from door to door,
and rejected at all.

Next day, however, they were accommodated by the Governor with an
agreeable house in the upper part of Valetta; and his Lordship, as
soon as they were domiciled, began to take lessons in Arabic from a
monk--I believe one of the librarians of the public library. His
whole time was not, however, devoted to study; for he formed an
acquaintance with Mrs Spencer Smith, the lady of the gentleman of
that name, who had been our resident minister at Constantinople: he
affected a passion for her; but it was only Platonic. She, however,
beguiled him of his valuable yellow diamond ring. She is the
Florence of Childe Harold, and merited the poetical embalmment, or
rather the amber immortalisation, she possesses there--being herself
a heroine. There was no exaggeration in saying that many incidents
of her life would appear improbable in fiction. Her adventures with
the Marquis de Salvo form one of the prettiest romances in the
Italian language; everything in her destiny was touched with
adventure: nor was it the least of her claims to sympathy that she
had incurred the special enmity of Napoleon.

After remaining about three weeks at Malta, Byron embarked with his
friend in a brig of war, appointed to convoy a fleet of small
merchantmen to Prevesa. I had, about a fortnight before, passed over
with the packet on her return from Messina to Girgenti, and did not
fall in with them again till the following spring, when we met at
Athens. In the meantime, besides his Platonic dalliance with Mrs
Spencer Smith, Byron had involved himsel