The Complete Travel Books of W.D. Howells (Illustrated Edition). William Dean Howells

The Complete Travel Books of W.D. Howells (Illustrated Edition)

target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="#ulink_a5ab5b7d-bf95-5472-82b1-bfa03d38d331">49 The rogues, it must be confessed, are often very polite. This same friend of mine one day found a man in the act of getting down into a boat with his favorite singing bird in its cage. “What are you doing with that bird?” he thought himself authorized to inquire. The thief looked about him a moment, and perceiving himself detected, handed back the cage with a cool ”La scusi!“ (“Beg pardon!”) as if its removal had been a trifling inadvertance.

50 A. Foscarini, in 1687, was the last patrician who wore the beard.

51 A clerk or employé with a salary of fifty cents a day keeps a maid-servant, that his wife may fulfill to society the important duty of doing nothing.

52 The poet Gray, genteelly making the grand tour in 1740, wrote to his father from Florence: “The only thing the Italians shine in is their reception of strangers. At such times every thing is magnificence: the more remarkable as in their ordinary course of life they are parsimonious to a degree of nastiness. I saw in one of the vastest palaces of Rome (that of the Prince Pamfilio), the apartment which he himself inhabited, a bed that most servants in England would disdain to lie in, and furniture much like that of a soph at Cambridge. This man is worth 30,000l. a year.” Italian nature has changed so little in a century, that all this would hold admirably true of Italian life at this time. The goodly outside in religion, in morals, in every thing is too much the ambition of Italy; this achieved, she is content to endure any pang of self-denial, and sell what little comfort she knows—it is mostly imported, like the word, from England—to strangers at fabulous prices. In Italy the luxuries of life are cheap, and the conveniences unknown or excessively dear.

53 It is no longer usual for girls to be educated in convents, and most young ladies of the better classes, up to the age of thirteen or fourteen years, receive their schooling in secular establishments, whither they go every day for study, or where they sometimes live as in our boarding-schools, and where they are taught the usual accomplishments, greater attention being paid to French and music than to other things.

54 In early days every noble Venetian family had its chaplain, who, on the occasion of great dinners and suppers, remained in the kitchen, and received as one of his perquisites the fragments that came back from the table.

55 The only title conferred on any patrician of Venice during the Republic was Cavaliere, and this was conferred by a legislative act in reward of distinguished service. The names of the nobility were written in the Golden Book of the Republic, and they were addressed as Illustrissimo or Eccellenza. They also signed themselves nobile, between the Christian name and surname, as it is still the habit of the untitled nobility to do.

56 A count who doesn’t count (money) counts for nothing.

57 Mutinelli, Gli Ultimi Cinquant’ Anni della Repubblica di Veneza.