ll
she wishes, happy perhaps in her love, but never more at peace,--"_ma
tranquillo mai piu_."

And he ends the letter with a verse quoted from Guarini's "Pastor
Fido."[185]

His heart assuredly was satisfied, but precisely because he truly loved,
and felt himself beloved; therefore did he also suffer from the
impossibility of reconciling the exigencies of his heart with
circumstances. In one of these beautiful letters, so full of simplicity
and refinement, he tells her:--

"What we shall have to suffer is of common occurrence, and we must bear
it like many others, for true love is never happy; but we two shall
suffer still more because we are placed in no ordinary circumstances."

His real sentiments of soul are likewise displayed in that beautiful
satirical poem, "Don Juan," in the third canto of which he exclaims:--

"Oh, Love! what is it in this world of ours
Which makes it fatal to be loved? Ah, why
With cypress branches hast thou wreathed thy bowers,
And made thy best interpreter a sigh?"

Nevertheless, when he had left Venice, which became altogether
distasteful to him, and gone to live at Ravenna, his heart grew calmer.
To Murray he writes:--

"You inquire after my health and _spirits_ in large letters; my health
can't be very bad, for I cured myself of a sharp tertian ague in three
weeks, with cold water, which had held my stoutest gondolier for months,
notwithstanding all the bark of the apothecary,--a circumstance which
surprised D'Aglietti, who said it was a proof of great stamina,
particularly in so epidemic a season. I did it out of dislike to the
taste of bark (which I can't bear), and succeeded, contrary to the
prophecies of every body, by simply taking nothing at all. As to
spirits, they are unequal, now high, now low,--like other people's, I
suppose, and depending upon circumstances."

Having grown intimate with the Count and Countess G----, he was
requested by the former to accompany his young wife into society, to the
play, everywhere, in short; soon Lord Byron took up his abode in their
palace, and the repose of heart and mind he thus attained was so great,
that no sadness seemed able to come near him, as long as this tranquil,
regular, pleasing sort of existence lasted, and it seemed destined to
endure forever.

But nothing is permanent here below, and especially happiness, be its
source regular or irregular; such is the mysterious eternal law of this
earthly life, doubtles