he
door immediately to that apartment, which is very large, and very cold,
with bricks to set their feet on only, and a brazier filled with warm
wood ashes, to keep their fingers from freezing, which in summer they
employ with cards, and seem but little inclined to lay them down when
ladies pass through to the receiving room. The strange familiarity this
class of people think proper to assume, half joining in the
conversation, and crying _oibo_[Footnote: Oh dear!], when the master
affirms something they do not quite assent to, is apt to shock one at
beginning, the more when one reflects upon the equally offensive
humility they show on being first accepted into the family; when it is
exposed that they receive the new master, or lady's hand, in a half
kneeling posture, and kiss it, as women under the rank of Countess do
the Queen of England's when presented at our court.--This
obsequiousness, however, vanishes completely upon acquaintance, and the
footman, if not very seriously admonished indeed, yawns, spits, and
displays what one of our travel-writers emphatically terms his flag of
abomination behind the chair of a woman of quality, without the
slightest sensation of its impropriety. There is, however, a sort of odd
farcical drollery mingled with this grossness, which tends greatly to
disarm one's wrath; and I felt more inclined to laugh than be angry one
day, when, from the head of my own table, I saw the servant of a
nobleman who dined with us cramming some chicken pattes down his throat
behind the door; our own folks humorously trying to choak him, by
pretending that his lord called him, while his mouth was full. Of a
thousand comical things in the same way, I will relate one:--Mr.
Piozzi's valet was dressing my hair at Paris one morning, while some man
sate at an opposite window of the same inn, singing and playing upon the
violoncello: I had not observed the circumstance, but my perrucchiere's
distress was evident; he writhed and twisted about like a man pinched
with the cholic, and pulled a hundred queer faces: at last--What is the
matter, Ercolani, said I, are you not well? Mistress, replies the
fellow, if that beast don't leave off soon, I shall run mad with rage,
or else die; and so you'll see an honest Venetian lad killed by a French
dog's howling.

The phrase of _mistress_ is here not confined to servants at all;
gentlemen, when they address one, cry, _mia padrona_[Footnote: My
mistress], mighty sweetly, and