"I do not know whether I mentioned to you some time ago, that I had
parted with the Dr. Polidori a few weeks previous to my leaving
Diodati. I know no great harm of him; but he had an alacrity of
getting into scrapes, and was too young and heedless; and having
enough to attend to in my own concerns, and without time to become
his tutor, I thought it much better to give him his conge. He
arrived at Milan some weeks before Mr. Hobhouse and myself. About a
week ago, in consequence of a quarrel at the theatre with an
Austrian officer, in which he was exceedingly in the wrong, he has
contrived to get sent out of the territory, and is gone to
Florence. I was not present, the pit having been the scene of
altercation; but on being sent for from the Cavalier Breme's box,
where I was quietly staring at the ballet, I found the man of
medicine begirt with grenadiers, arrested by the guard, conveyed
into the guard-room, where there was much swearing in several
languages. They were going to keep him there for the night; but on
my giving my name, and answering for his apparition next morning,
he was permitted egress. Next day he had an order from the
government to be gone in twenty-four hours, and accordingly gone he
is, some days ago. We did what we could for him, but to no purpose;
and indeed he brought it upon himself, as far as I could learn, for
I was not present at the squabble itself. I believe this is the
real state of his case; and I tell it you because I believe things
sometimes reach you in England in a false or exaggerated form. We
found Milan very polite and hospitable[127], and have the same
hopes of Verona and Venice. I have filled my paper.

"Ever yours," &c.

[Footnote 127: With Milan, however, or its society, the noble traveller
was far from being pleased, and in his Memoranda, I recollect, he
described his stay there to be "like a ship under quarantine." Among
other persons whom he met in the society of that place was M. Beyle, the
ingenious author of "L'Histoire de la Peinture en Italie," who thus
describes the impression their first interview left upon him:--

"Ce fut pendant l'automne de 1816, que je le rencontrai au theatre de la
_Scala_, a Milan, dans la loge de M. Louis de Breme. Je fus frappe des
yeux de Lord Byron au moment ou il ecoutait un sestetto d'un opera de
Mayer intitu