From France the regal progress continued to Italy, everywhere greeted with wonder at its magnificence and admiration of my lady’s beauty.  Two spring months in 1823 were passed at Genoa, where Lord Byron loved to sit at the Countess’s feet and pay homage to her with eye and tongue.  From Genoa the procession fared majestically to Rome, of which her ladyship, in spite of the sensation she produced and the adulation she received, soon wearied; she sighed for Naples, where she was regally lodged in the Palazzo Belvidere, a Palace, as she declared, “fit for any queen.”  And how the squire’s daughter revelled in her new pleasure-house, with its courtyard and plashing fountain, its arcade and its colonnade, “supporting a terrace covered with flowers”; its marvellous gardens, filled with the rarest trees, shrubs and plants; and long gallery, “filled with pictures, statues, and bassi-relievi.”

“On the top of the gallery,” she says, “is a terrace, at the extreme end of which is a pavilion, with open arcades and paved with marble.  This pavilion commands a most charming prospect of the bay, the foreground filled up by gardens and vineyards.  The odour of the flowers in the grounds around the pavilion, and the Spanish jasmine and tuberoses that cover the walls, render it one of the most delicious retreats in the world.  The walls of all the rooms are literally covered with pictures; the architraves of the doors of the principal rooms are oriental alabaster and the rarest marbles; the tables and consoles are composed of the same costly materials; and the furniture bears the traces of its pristine splendour.”

Such was the Arabian palace of all delights of which her gorgeous ladyship now found herself mistress; and yet nothing would please her indulgent lord but the spending of a few thousands in adding to its splendours by new and costly furnishings.  Here she spent two-and-a-half years of ideal happiness, sailing by moonlight on the lovely bay, with d’Orsay for companion; visiting all the sights, from Pompeii to the galleries and museums, with a retinue of experts, such as Herschell and Gell in her train, and entertaining with a queenly magnificence Italian nobles and all the great ones of Europe who passed through Naples.

From Naples Lady Blessington took her train to Florence, where she cast her spell over Walter Savage Landor, who spent every possible hour in her fascinating company; and where she was joined by her husband’s daughter, the Lady Harriet Gardiner, a girl of fifteen, who, within a few weeks of reaching Italy, became the wife of my lady’s handsome protege, d’Orsay.  And it was not until 1828, six years after leaving London, that the stately procession turned its face homewards, halting for a few months of farewell magnificence in Paris, where Lady Blessington was installed in Marshal Ney’s mansion, in an environment even more gorgeous than the Palazzo Belvidere of Naples could boast, thanks to the prodigality of her infatuated lord.