Page:Journal of Conversations with Lord Byron.pdf/104

 serious or not. He has a habit of mystifying, that might impose upon many; but that can be detected by examining his physiognomy; for a sort of mock gravity, now and then broken by a malicious smile, betrays when he is speaking for effect, and not giving utterance to his real sentiments. If he sees that he is detected, he appears angry for a moment, and then laughingly admits that it amuses him to hoax people, as he calls it, and that when each person, at some future day, will give their different statements of him, they will be so contradictory, that all will be doubted - an idea that gratifies him exceedingly! The mobility of his nature is extraordinary, and makes him inconsistent in his actions as well as in his conversation. He introduced the subject of La Contessa Guiccioli and her family, which we of course, would not have touched on. He stated that they lived beneath his roof because his rank as a British peer afforded her father and brother protection, they having been banished from Ravenna, their native place, on account of their politics. He spoke in high terms of the Counts Gamba, father and son; he said that he had given the family a wing of his house, but that their establishments were totally separate, their repasts never taken together, and that such was their scrupulous delicacy, that they never would