Word: cicisbeo
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Dates: during 1941-1941
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...Cicisbeo. Meanwhile Byron had found time to write The Prisoner of Chilian, several cantos of Childe Harold, Manfred, Beppo, was working on Don Juan. One day at a party he met the Countess Teresa Guiccioli, wife of a big Romagnol landowner...
Presently Byron moved in with the Guiccioli at their Ravenna palazzo. At last he was a full-fledged cavaliere servente, a cicisbeo, an official gigolo whose prior rights, by old Italian custom, are fully recognized by the husband. Wrote Byron: "I have been an intriguer, a husband, a whoremonger, and now I am a Cavaliere Servente-by the holy! it is a strange sensation." Sometimes he grumbled: "I have been more ravished myself than anybody since the Trojan War." He added that he was "drilling very hard to learn how to double a shawl"-a gallantry all well-trained cicisbei...
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