They crossed the Simplon, and proceeded by the Lago
Maggiore to Milan, admiring the pass, but slighting the somewhat hothouse
beauties of the Borromean Islands. From Milan he writes, pronouncing its
cathedral to be only a little inferior to that of Seville, and delighted
with "a correspondence, all original and amatory, between Lucretia Borgia
and Cardinal Bembo." He secured a lock of the golden hair of the Pope's
daughter, and wished himself a cardinal.
[Footnote 1: This only appeared in 1831, but Campbell claims to have
given Byron in conversation the suggestion of the subject.]
At Verona, Byron dilates on the amphitheatre, as surpassing anything he
had seen even in Greece, and on the faith of the people in the story of
Juliet, from whose reputed tomb he sent some pieces of granite to Ada and
his nieces. In November we find him settled in Venice, "the greenest isle
of his imagination." There he began to form those questionable alliances
which are so marked a feature of his life, and so frequent a theme in his
letters, that it is impossible to pass them without notice. The first of
his temporary idols was Mariana Segati, "the wife of a merchant of
Venice," for some time his landlord.
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