Of the particulars of this brief negotiation that ensued upon Madame de Stael’s suggestion, I have no very accurate remembrance; but there can be little doubt that its failure, after the violence he had done his own pride in the overture, was what first infused any mixture of resentment or bitterness into the feelings hitherto entertained by him throughout these painful differences.  He had, indeed, since his arrival in Geneva, invariably spoken of his lady with kindness and regret, imputing the course she had taken, in leaving him, not to herself but others, and assigning whatever little share of blame he would allow her to bear in the transaction to the simple and, doubtless, true cause—­her not at all understanding him.  “I have no doubt,” he would sometimes say, “that she really did believe me to be mad.”

Another resolution connected with his matrimonial affairs, in which he often, at this time, professed his fixed intention to persevere, was that of never allowing himself to touch any part of his wife’s fortune.  Such a sacrifice, there is no doubt, would have been, in his situation, delicate and manly; but though the natural bent of his disposition led him to make the resolution, he wanted,—­what few, perhaps, could have attained,—­the fortitude to keep it.

The effects of the late struggle on his mind, in stirring up all its resources and energies, was visible in the great activity of his genius during the whole of this period, and the rich variety, both in character and colouring, of the works with which it teemed.  Besides the third Canto of Childe Harold and the Prisoner of Chillon, he produced also his two poems, “Darkness” and “The Dream,” the latter of which cost him many a tear in writing,—­being, indeed, the most mournful, as well as picturesque, “story of a wandering life” that ever came from the pen and heart of man.  Those verses, too, entitled “The Incantation,” which he introduced afterwards, without any connection with the subject, into Manfred, were also (at least, the less bitter portion of them) the production of this period; and as they were written soon after the last fruitless attempt at reconciliation, it is needless to say who was in his thoughts while he penned some of the opening stanzas.

    “Though thy slumber must be deep,
    Yet thy spirit shall not sleep;
    There are shades which will not vanish,
    There are thoughts thou canst not banish;
    By a power to thee unknown,
    Thou canst never be alone;
    Thou art wrapt as with a shroud,
    Thou art gather’d in a cloud;
    And for ever shalt thou dwell
    In the spirit of this spell.

    “Though thou see’st me not pass by,
    Thou shalt feel me with thine eye,
    As a thing that, though unseen,
    Must be near thee, and hath been;
    And when, in that secret dread,
    Thou hast turn’d around thy head,
    Thou shalt marvel I am not
    As thy shadow on the spot,
    And the power which thou dost feel
    Shall be what thou must conceal.”