hand had lifted her pillow from her bed, and dumped it on a chair. To such thrilling recitals the poet lent serious attention. "Her manner," he wrote in his journal, "convinced me that she was not deceived. We continued to sit by the fire, at intervals engaged in awful conversation, relative to the nature of these mysteries;"—that is, to the migrations of the pillow. As a result of sympathetic treatment, Claire would wind up the night with hysterics, writhing in convulsions on the floor, and shrieking dismally, until poor Mrs. Shelley would be summoned from a sick-bed to soothe her to slumber. "Give me a garden, and absentia Claire, and I will thank my love for many favours," is the weary comment of the wife, after months of inextinguishable agitation.
There was no loophole of escape, however, from a burden so rashly shouldered. Miss Clairmont made one or two ineffectual efforts at self-support; but found them little to her liking. She could not, and she would not, live with her mother, Mrs. Godwin;—"a very disgusting woman, and wears green spectacles," is Charles Lamb's description of this
