In snatching this relic from the fiery furnace, my hand was severely burnt; and had any one seen me do the act I should have been put into quarantine. —Edward John Trelawny, Records of Shelley, Byron, and the Author, 1878 Lady Macbeth: Here's the smell of the blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. Oh, oh, oh! Doctor of Physic: What a sigh is there! The heart is sorely charged. Waiting-Gentlewoman: I would not have such a heart in my bosom for the dignity of the whole body. —Shakespeare, Macbeth Serchio River at the end of summer was low and narrow between its banks, and the glittering waves that swept in from the Ligurean Sea and crashed along this uninhabited stretch of the Tuscany coast went foaming quite a distance up the river mouth, apparently unopposed by any current. The onshore breeze hissed faintly in the branches of the aromatic pine trees that furred the slopes of the hills. The Bolivar was moored fifty yards out from shore, near a sloop that flew the Austrian flag, and Byron's carriage stood on the dirt road above the beach.
