To whatever extent this unsentimental incident may have had a share in
dispelling the romance of his passion, it is certain that, before the
expiration of the first twelvemonth, he began to find his lodgings in
the Spezieria inconvenient, and accordingly entered into treaty with
Count Gritti for his Palace on the Grand Canal,--engaging to give for
it, what is considered, I believe, a large rent in Venice, 200 louis a
year. On finding, however, that, in the counterpart of the lease brought
for his signature, a new clause had been introduced, prohibiting him not
only from underletting the house, in case he should leave Venice, but
from even allowing any of his own friends to occupy it during his
occasional absence, he declined closing on such terms; and resenting so
material a departure from the original engagement, declared in society,
that he would have no objection to give the same rent, though
acknowledged to be exorbitant, for any other palace in Venice, however
inferior, in all respects, to Count Gritti's. After such an
announcement, he was not likely to remain long unhoused; and the
Countess Mocenigo having offered him one of her three Palazzi, on the
Grand Canal, he removed to this house in the summer of the present year,
and continued to occupy it during the remainder of his stay in Venice.

Highly censurable, in point of morality and decorum, as was his course
of life while under the roof of Madame * *, it was (with pain I am
forced to confess) venial in comparison with the strange, headlong
career of licence to which, when weaned from that connection, he so
unrestrainedly and, it may be added, defyingly abandoned himself. Of the
state of his mind on leaving England I have already endeavoured to
convey some idea, and, among the feelings that went to make up that
self-centred spirit of resistance which he then opposed to his fate, was
an indignant scorn of his own countrymen for the wrongs he thought they