I sought to distract my mind from a sense of her desolation and my own
solitude, by plunging into a vortex that was anything but pleasure." In
any case, he forsook the "Dame," and, by what his biographer calls a
"descent in the scale of refinement, for which nothing but the wayward
state of his mind can account," sought the companions of his leisure hours
among the wearers of the "fazzioli." The carnivals of the years 1818,
1819, mark the height of his excesses. Early in the former, Mariana Segati
fell out of favour, owing to Byron's having detected her in selling the
jewels he had given as presents, and so being led to suspect a large
mercenary element in her devotion. To her succeeded Margarita Cogni, the
wife of a baker who proved as accommodating as his predecessor, the
linen-draper. This woman was decidedly a character, and Senor Castelar has
almost elevated her into a heroine. A handsome virago, with brown
shoulders, and black hair, endowed with the strength of an Amazon, "a face
like Faustina's, and the figure of a Juno--tall and energetic as a
pythoness," she quartered herself for twelve months in the palace as
"Donna di governo," and drove the servants about without let or hindrance.
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