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CONVERSATIONS

OF

LORD BYRON.

BEING One day at Moloni's the bookseller's at Pisa, a report was in circulation that a subject belonging to the Lucchese States had been taken up for sacrilege, and sentenced to be burnt alive. A priest who entered the library at that moment confirmed the news, and expressed himself thus:-" Scelerato! he took the consecrated wafers off the altar, and threw them contemptuously about the church! What punishment can be

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great enough for such a monstrous crime? Burning is too easy a death! I shall go to Lucca, I would almost go to Spain,-to see the wretch expire at the stake!" Such were the humane and Christian sentiments of a minister of the Gospel! I quitted him with disgust, and immediately hastened to Lord Byron's.

"Is it possible?" said he, after he had heard my story. "Can we believe that we

"live in the nineteenth century? However,

"I can believe any thing of the Duchess of She is an Infanta of Spain, a

"Lucca. (6 bigot in religion, and of course advocates "the laws of the Inquisition. But it is "scarcely credible that she will venture to

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put them into effect here. We must en"deavour to prevent this auto da fé. Lord "Guilford is arrived:-we will get him to

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use his influence. Surely the Grand Duke “of Tuscany will interfere, for he has him

"self never signed a death-warrant since he the throne."

66 came upon

Shelley entered at this moment horrorstruck: he had just heard that the criminal was to suffer the next day. He proposed that we should mount and arm ourselves as well as we could, set off immediately for Lucca, and endeavour to rescue the prisoner when brought out for execution, making at full speed for the Tuscan frontiers, where he would be safe. Mad and hopeless as the scheme was, Lord Byron consented, carried away by his feelings, to join in it, if other means should fail. We agreed to meet again in the evening, and in the mean time to get a petition signed by all the English residents at Pisa, to be presented to the Grand Duke.

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"I will myself," said he, "write imme

diately to Lord Guilford.”

He did so, and received an answer a few hours after, telling him that the same report had reached Lord Guilford; but that he had learned, on investigation, that it was unfounded.

It appeared that the Duchess had issued a proclamation which made the peasant amenable, when apprehended, to the ancient laws of Spain; but that he had escaped to Florence and given himself up to the police, who had stipulated not to make him over to the authorities at Lucca, but on condition of his being tried by the Tuscan laws.

Speaking of Coppet and Madame de Staël, he said:

"I knew Madame de Staël in England. "When she came over she created a great

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