Page:Journal of Conversations with Lord Byron.pdf/75

 tient to attempt a refutation, that it was only by my volubility I could keep her silent. She interrupted me every moment by gesticulating, exclaiming - but I continued saying how dangerous it was to inculcate the belief that genius, talent, acquirements, and accomplishments, such as Corinne was represented to possess, could not preserve a woman from becoming a victim to an unrequited passion, and that reason, absence, and female pride were unavailing.

"I told her that Corinne would be considered, if not cited, as an excuse for violent passions, by all young ladies with imaginations exalté, and that she had much to answer for. Had you seen her! I now wonder how I had courage to go on; but I was in one of my humors, and had heard of her commenting on me one day, so I determined to pay her off. She told me that I, above all people, was the last person that ought to talk of morals, as nobody had done more to deteriorate them. I looked innocent, and added, I was willing to plead guilty of having sometimes represented vice under alluring forms, but so it was generally in the world, therefore it was necessary to paint so; but that I never represented virtue under the sombre and disgusting shapes of dulness, severity,