Switzerland was at that time
overrun by the English, whom the recently-signed Peace had attracted to
the Continent. The laureate took the lead of those who tried to make the
good but bigoted people of Geneva believe in all the tittle-tattle
against Byron which was passed about in London, and actually attempted
to make a scandal of his very presence in their town. When he passed in
the streets they stopped to stare at him insolently, putting up their
glasses to their eyes. They followed him in his rides; they reported
that he was seducing all the girls in the "Rue Basse," and, in fact,
although his life was perfectly virtuous, one would have said that his
presence was a contagion. Having found in a travellers' register the
name of Shelley, accompanied by the qualification of "atheist!" which
Byron had amiably struck out with his pen, the laureate caught at this
and gave out that the two friends had declared themselves to be
atheists. He attributed their friendship to infamous motives; he spoke
of incest and of other abominations, so odious, that Byron's friends
deemed it prudent not to speak to him a word of all this at the time. He
only learned it at Venice later.[10]

Loaded with this very creditable amount of falsehoods, most of which
were believed in Geneva, the laureate returned to London to spread them
in England, so as to prevent the effects of the beautiful and touching
poems which were poured forth from the great and wounded soul of Byron,
and which might have restored him to the esteem of all the honest and
just minds of his country.

Meanwhile Lady C. L---- having failed to discover any one who would
accept the reward she offered to the person who would take Byron's life,
had recourse to another means of injuring him--to a kind of moral
assassination--which she effected by the publication of her revengeful
sentiments in the three volumes entitled "Glenarvon." Such a work might
justify a biographer in passing it over with contempt without even
mentioning it; but as enemies of Lord Byron have made capital out of
this book,--as it found credence even with some superior minds, such as
Goethe's--as the intimacy which prefaced this revenge caused great
sensation all over England, and was a source of continual vexation and
pain for Byron--it must not be passed over without comment, as Moore did
to spare the susceptibility of living personages.

Lady C. L---- (afterward Lady M----) belonged to the high aristocracy