Page:The Diary of Dr John William Polidori.djvu/202

190 by blood; and he was evidently not disinclined to pick a quarrel with an Austrian military man. He was indiscreet, and indeed wrong, in asking an Austrian officer on guard to take off his cap; and, although he addressed the officer at first in courteous terms, his expression "Lo voglio" was not to be brooked even by a civilian. Lord Byron mentioned the matter in a letter to his sister, November 6, 1816, as follows: "Dr. Polidori, whom I parted with before I left Geneva (not for any great harm, but because he was always in squabbles, and had no sort of conduct), contrived at Milan, which he reached before me, to get into a quarrel with an Austrian, and to be ordered out of the city by the Government. I did not even see his adventure, nor had anything to do with it, except getting him out of arrest, and trying to get him altogether out of the scrape." And on the same day to Thomas Moore. "On arriving at Milan I found this gentleman in very good society, where he prospered for some weeks; but at length, in the theatre, he quarrelled with an Austrian officer, and was sent out by the Government in twenty-four hours. I could not prevent his being sent off; which, indeed, he partly deserved, being quite in the wrong, and having begun a row for row's sake. He is not a bad fellow, but young and hot-headed, and more likely to incur diseases than to cure them." Beyle likewise has left an account of the affair, translated thus.