I am violent, but not malignant; for only fresh provocations
can awaken my resentment. Remember that if you have injured me in aught,
this forgiveness is something, and that if I have injured you, it is
something more still, if it be true, as moralists assert, that the most
offending are the least forgiving." "It is a strange business," says the
Countess, about Lady Byron. "When he was praising her mental and personal
qualifications, I asked him how all that he now said agreed with certain
sarcasms supposed to be a reference to her in his works. He smiled, shook
his head, and said, they were meant to spite and vex her, when he was
wounded and irritated at her refusing to receive or answer his letters;
that he was sorry he had written them, but might on similar provocations
recur to the same vengeance." On another occasion he said, "Lady B.'s
first idea is what is due to herself. I wish she thought a little more of
what is due to others. My besetting sin is a want of that self-respect
which she has in excess. When I have broken out, on slight provocation,
into one of my ungovernable fits of rage, her calmness piqued and seemed
to reproach me; it gave her an air of superiority that vexed and increased
my _mauvaise humeur_.
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