poorest of the poor, would have been
the first persons to benefit.

Sir Henry often discussed with me the economic conditions of Cyprus. The
population, he said, comprised no class that in England would be called
rich, and very few of the peasants, though mostly their own landlords,
lived a life which an English plowman would tolerate. The inhabitants as
a whole were certainly exceptionally liable to a class of diseases the
cause of which is malnutrition, and I came, as I talked to Sir Henry, to
see in Cyprus a very useful refutation of the doctrine that the masses
are only poor when a few rich people plunder them.

Meanwhile it was a satisfaction to reflect that nobody in Cyprus could
make trouble by holding up the rich to execration, the reason being that
there were no rich to execrate, and the charm which the imaginative
spectator found in the life around him was not likely to be broken by
any very rude awakening. Sir Henry himself was not perhaps sensitive to
romance, but he did all he could to aid me in my own quest of it, and
until my time for quitting his roof came, one day followed another
leaving behind it soothing or exciting memories, the colors of which
even now have not lost their freshness.

On my way homeward I went from Cyprus to Florence, to stay with some
friends who had a villa there. The time was Easter, but the weather was
like a damp winter. I found there many acquaintances. Among them was a
Madame de Tchiacheff, whom I had known in my boyhood at Littlehampton.
Scotch by birth, she had married a well-known Russian, and her house,
with its cosmopolitan company, was among the most distinguished in
Florence. I and my hostess went to pay a call on "Ouida," whom I knew
more or less by correspondence, but the coachman took us by mistake to
the Villa Careggi instead. By the kindness of Madame de Tchiacheff I was
made known to the Strozzi family, and we visited their monumental
palace, which was not then shown to the public. With two other palatial
houses I came to be acquainted also--one the home of the Russo-American
Bourtolines, the other then occupied by Mr. Macquay the banker. The
latter of these houses was specially interesting to myself as having
been once the home of the then Austrian Minister, Baron von Hugel, whose
younger son my cousin, Miss Froude, married.

The constant question which to me all these great houses suggested was,
how were the fortunes made by which they were maintained and bu