In Milan Byron renewed his acquaintance with the Abbé di Breme, who now more seriously educated him into Italian politics. In di Breme's circle he also met the writer Stendhal, who had been one of Napoleon's secretaries. Byron had always associated Napoleon with the radical side of the French Revolution, as an anti-establishment figure rather than an aspirant emperor. Not that he was blind to the bloodshed that had followed in Napoleon's wake, but when pushed he would identify with the foe of the English establishment and of European monarchies. It was easy then for him to have sympathies with the nationalist group in which he now found himself, who were opposed to the imposition of Austrian rule over Lombardy and Piedmont following the settlements after Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo. For Byron this was simply the reestablishment of the ancien régime. His association with this group did not go unnoticed by the Austrian authorities, particularly after an incident in La Scala Opera House, in which Polidori managed to have himself arrested, and Byron and his companions had to give their names to have him released. From this point on, Byron was under the almost totally incompetent surveillance of the Austrian secret police.

Hobhouse and Byron moved on to Venice in November. Here the effects of the Austrian occupation were felt if anything even more directly, and Byron was made to feel acutely conscious of England's role in the peace settlement. He began to speak seriously of never returning to England. He found the atmosphere of Venice extremely congenial, and, of course, its relaxed sexual mores were much to his taste. These latter, it should be noted, though recognizing the fact of sexual appetite which English society attempted to pretend was narrowly controllable, were not an out-and-out charter of free love, but had their own rules of behaviour. He studied Venetian dialect, and Armenian at the monastery in the Lagoon. He began an affair with Marianna Segati, the wife of his landlord, and entered into the Carnival festivities with zest, though it was the Carnival of the following year that left him ‘debilitated’ with a social disease for a few weeks.