’Besides, she shut herself up in silence a thousand times more cruel than Clytemnestra’s poniard:  that only killed the body; whereas Lady Byron’s silence was destined to kill the soul,—­and such a soul!—­leaving the door open to calumny, and making it to be supposed that her silence was magnanimity destined to cover over frightful wrongs, perhaps even depravity.  In vain did he, feeling his conscience at ease, implore some inquiry and examination.  She refused; and the only favour she granted was to send him, one fine day, two persons to see whether he were not mad.

’And, why, then, had she believed him mad?  Because she, a methodical, inflexible woman, with that unbendingness which a profound moralist calls the worship rendered to pride by a feelingless soul, because she could not understand the possibility of tastes and habits different to those of ordinary routine, or of her own starched life.  Not to be hungry when she was; not to sleep at night, but to write while she was sleeping, and to sleep when she was up; in short, to gratify the requirements of material and intellectual life at hours different to hers,—­all that was not merely annoying for her, but it must be madness; or, if not, it betokened depravity that she could neither submit to nor tolerate without perilling her own morality.

   ’Such was the grand secret of the cruel silence which exposed Lord
   Byron to the most malignant interpretations, to all the calumny and
   revenge of his enemies.

’She was, perhaps, the only woman in the world so strangely organised,—­the only one, perhaps, capable of not feeling happy and proud at belonging to a man superior to the rest of humanity; and fatally was it decreed that this woman alone of her species should be Lord Byron’s wife!’

In a note is added,—­

’If an imaginary fear, and even an unreasonable jealousy, may be her excuse (just as one excuses a monomania), can one equally forgive her silence?  Such a silence is morally what are physically the poisons which kill at once, and defy all remedies; thus insuring the culprit’s safety.  This silence it is which will ever be her crime; for by it she poisoned the life of her husband.’

The book has several chapters devoted to Lord Byron’s peculiar virtues; and under the one devoted to magnanimity and heroism, his forgiving disposition receives special attention.  The climax of all is stated to be that he forgave Lady Byron.  All the world knew that, since he had declared this fact in a very noisy and impassioned manner in the fourth canto of ‘Childe Harold,’ together with a statement of the wrongs which he forgave; but the Guiccioli thinks his virtue, at this period, has not been enough appreciated.  In her view, it rose to the sublime.  She says of Lady Byron,—­