Longhi has not treated many times and in divers ways. All those episodes
which make up the Day of a Gentleman as sung at a later date by Parini,
had been already set forth by the brush of Longhi."[93]

The duties of the toilette, over which ladies and young men of fashion
dawdled through their mornings; the drinking of chocolate in bed,
attended by a wife or mistress or obsequious man of business; the long
hours spent before the looking-glass, with maids or valets matching
complexions, sorting dresses from the wardrobe, and fixing patches upon
telling points of cheek or forehead; the fashionable hairdresser,
building up a lady's tower with tongs, or tying the knot of a beau's
bag-wig; the children trooping in to kiss their mother's hand at
breakfast-time--stiff little girls in hoops, and tiny _cavalieri_ in
uniform, with sword and shoe-buckles and queue; the vendors of flowered
silks and laces laying out their wares; the pert young laundress
smuggling a _billet-doux_ into a beauty's hand before her unsuspecting
husband's face; the fine gentleman ordering a waistcoat in the shop of a
tailoress, ogling and flirting over the commission, while a running
footman with tall cane in hand comes bustling in to ask if his lord's
suit is ready; the old patrician lolling in his easy-chair and toying
with a fan; the abbe turning over the leaves of some fresh play or
morning paper: scenes like these we may assign to the Venetian forenoon.

Afternoon brings ceremonious visits, when grand ladies, sailing in their
hoops, salute each other, and beaux make legs on entering a
drawing-room, and lacqueys hand round chocolate on silver salvers.
Dancing-lessons may perhaps be assigned to this part of the day; a
spruce French professor teaching his fair pupil how to drop a curtsey,
or to swim with solemn grace through the figures of the minuet. At night
we are introduced to the hall of the Ridotto; patricians in toga and
snow-white periwig hold banks for faro beneath the glittering
chandeliers; men and women, closely masked, jostle each other at the
gambling-tables, where sequins and ducats lie about in heaps. The petty
houses, or _casini_, now engage attention. Here may be seen a pair of
stealthy, muffled libertines hastening to complete an assignation. Then
there are meetings at street-corners or on the landing-places of
_traghetti_--mysterious figures flitting to and fro in wide miraculous
_bautte_ beneath the light of flickering flambeaux.