It was in the flat rented by Ned and Jane
Williams in the Tre Palazzi that Trelawny, on the first night of his arrival in Pisa, first saw Shelley. The description which he has left us of that encounter furnishes the most vivid portrait of Shelley that exists. " The Williamses," he write, " received me in their earnest and cordial manner ; we had a great deal to communicate to each other and were in loud and animated conversation, when I was rather put out by observing in the passage near the open door, opposite to where I sat, a pair of glittering eyes steadily fixed on mine: it was too dark to make out whom they belonged to. With the acuteness of a woman, Mrs. Williams' eyes followed the direction of mine, and
going to the doorway she laughingly said ' Come in, Shelley, it only our friend Tre just arrived.' Swftly gliding in, blushing lit a girl, a tall, thin stripling held out both his hands ; and although could hardly believe as I looked at his flushed, feminine, and less face that it could be the Poet, I returned his warm pressure.. I was silent from astonishment: was it possible this mild-lookin beardless boy could be the veritable monster at war with all world? . .. He was habited like a boy in a black jacket and trows which he seemed to have outgrown." During the months that fs lowed Trelawny divided his days between the Palazzo Lanfranc on the north tide of the river and the Tre Palazzi on the sou His adoration for Shelley was only equalled by his dislike and jealou.
t of Byron. " When," he writes, " I left his gloomy hall, and echoes of the heavy, iron-plated door died awn, I could hard refrain from shouting with joy as I hurried along the broad-flagged terrace which overhangs the pleasant river. . . . After a hasty dinn at my aibergo I hastened along the river to the hospitable and Ghee: ful abode of the Shelleys. There I found those sympathies sentiments which the Pilgrim denounced as illusions believed in the only realities." Trelawny's passion for the extremes of contra• is always apt to blur his veracity.
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