y--an inevitable state of
affairs when the fact is taken into consideration that the city was
filled with legates and embassies, all anxious to wait upon his holiness
the pope and gain some special privilege or concession. At this time the
cardinals, too, were not mere ecclesiastics, but rather men of great
wealth and power; often they became prime ministers in their several
countries,--as Richelieu, for example,--and the great and influential
houses of Savoy, Este, Gonzaga, Farnese, Barberini, and many others,
always possessed one or more of them who vied in magnificence with the
pope himself. And all this helped to make the Eternal City the scene of
much brilliancy. The papal court was the natural centre of all this
animation, and many a stately procession wended its way to the Vatican.
On one occasion, the Duke of Parma, wishing to compliment a newly
elected pope, sent as his representative the Count of San Secondo, who
went to his solemn interview followed by a long procession of one
hundred and fifty carriages, and appeared before the pontiff with
eighteen distinguished prelates in his train. This mad passion for
display led to so many evils of all kinds that Urban VIII. prohibited
"indecent garments" for both men and women. In the interests of public
morality, it was further decreed that women were not to take music
lessons from men, and nuns were allowed no other professors than their
own companions. Public singing, distinct from religious ceremonies, was
a novelty at this time, and women with the gift of song were paid most
liberally for their services. Venice was the city most noted for its
festivals and carnivals, and here these women were given most generous
treatment.

In Florence, as in all the rest of Italy, Spain was taken as "the glass
of fashion, the mould of form" for the first part of the century, but
the splendor of the court of Louis Quatorze soon caused French fashions
to reign supreme. Then, as now, brides were accustomed to dress in
white, while married women were given a wide latitude in their choice of
colors. At first, widows wore a dress distinctive not only in color but
in cut, yet eventually they were to be distinguished by only a small
head-dress of black crape. Young women were much given to curling their
hair, and at the same time it was the fashion to wear upon the forehead
a cluster of blond curls, a _petite perruque_, which, in the words of an
old chronicler, Rinuccini, "is very unbec