Oh, Time! Why dost not pause? Thy scythe, so dirty With rust, should surely cease to hack and hew. Reset it; shave more smoothly, also slower, If but… - Lord Byron

I have fallen in love within the last month with a Romagnuola Countess from Ravenna — the Spouse of a year of Count Guiccioli — who is sixty — the Girl twenty — he has eighty thousand ducats of rent — and has had two wives before — but he is Sixty — he is the first of Ravenna Nobles — but he is sixty — She is fair as Sunrise — and warm as Noon — we had but ten days — to manage all our little matters in beginning middle and end. & we managed them; — and I have done my duty — with the proper consummation. — But She is young — and was not content with what she had done — unless it was to be turned to the advantage of the public — and so She made an eclat which rather astonished even the Venetians — and electrified the Conversazioni of the Benzone — the Albrizzi — & the Michelli — and made her husband look embarrassed. — They have been gone back to Ravenna — some time — but they return in the Winter. — She is the queerest woman I ever met with — for in general they cost one something in one way or other — whereas by an odd combination of circumstances — I have proved an experience to HER — which is not my custom, — but an accident — however it don't mater. — She is a sort of an Italian Caroline Lamb, except that She is much prettier, and not so savage. — But She has the same red-hot head — the same noble disdain of public opinion — with the superstructure of all that Italy can add to such natural dispositions. — To by sure they may go much further here with impunity — as her husband's rank ensured their reception at all societies including the Court — and as it was her first outbreak since Marriage — the Sympathizing world was liberal. — She is also of the Ravenna noblesse — educated in a convent — sacrifice to Wealth — filial duty and all that. — I am damnably in love — but they are gone — gone — for many months — and nothing but Hope — keeps me alive seriously.

For truth is always strange; stranger than fiction.

The heart ran o'er
With silent worship of the great of old! The dead but sceptred sovereigns, who still rule
Our spirits from their urns.