he didn't dress, so he has done so since. But he says it is a
_seccatura_ (this means, I believe, a bore), and he told me we English
sacrifice our whole lives to fuss, form, and the outside of things.
There is a good deal of truth in this. What numbers of people one knows
who are ever so poor, and who yet, for the sake of the look of the
thing, get into debt over their ears! And, then, quantities of them go
to church for the form of the thing, when they don't _believe_ one atom;
they will tell you at luncheon that they don't. I fancy Italians are
much more honest than we are in this sort of way. Piero says if they are
poor they don't mind saying so, and if they have no religion they don't
pretend to have any. He declares we English spoil all our lives because
we fancy it is our duty to pretend to be something we are not. Now,
isn't that really very true? I am sure you would delight in all he says.
He is so original, so unconventional. Our people think him ignorant
because he doesn't read and doesn't care a straw about politics. But I
assure you he is as clever as anything can be; and he doesn't get his
ideas out of newspapers, nor repeat like a parrot what his chief of
party tells him. I do wish you could have come over and could have seen
him. It was so unkind of you to be ill just at the very time of my
marriage. You know that it is only to you that I ever say quite what I
feel about things. The girls are too young, and mamma doesn't
understand. She never could see why I would not marry poor Hampshire.
She always said that I should care for him in time. I don't think mamma
can ever have been in love with anybody. I wonder what _she_ married
for: don't you?

* * * * *

_From the Prince Piero di San Zenone, Coombe-Bysset, to the Count
Zazzari, Italian Legation, London._

_Caro Gigi_,--

Pray send me all the French novels you can find, and a case of Turkish
cigarettes. I am in Paradise, but Paradise is a little dull, and
exceedingly damp, at least in England. Does it always rain in this
country? It has rained here without stopping for seventeen days and a
half. I produce upon myself the impression of being one of those larks
who sit behind wires on a little square of wet grass. I should like to
run up to London. I see you have Jeanne Granier and the others; but I
suppose it would be against all the unwritten canons of a honeymoon.
What a strange institution. A honeymoon! Who first inven