Page:Journal of Conversations with Lord Byron.pdf/73

 self. Shake not thy jetty locks at me;' ten years hence, if we both live so long, you will allow that I am right, though you now think me a cynic for saying all this. Madame de Staël," continued Byron, "had peculiar satisfaction in impressing on her auditors the severity of the persecution she underwent from Napoleon; a certain mode of enraging her, was to appear to doubt the extent to which she wished it to be believed this had been pushed, as she looked on the persecution as a triumphant proof of her literary and political importance, which she more than insinuated Napoleon feared might subvert his government. This was a weakness, but a common one. One half of the clever people of the world believe they are hated and persecuted, and the other half imagine they are admired and beloved. Both are wrong, and both false conclusions are produced by vanity, though that vanity is the strongest which believes in the hatred and persecution, as it implies a belief of extraordinary superiority to account for it."

I could not suppress the smile that Byron's reflections excited, and, with his usual quickness, he instantly felt the application I had made of them to himself, for he blushed, and half angry, and half laughing, said: "Oh! I see what you are smiling at; you think that I have described my