happen to love
my husband excessively, and desire nobody's company in the world but
his. We are not _people of fashion_ though you know, nor at all rich;
so how should we set fashions for our betters? They would only say,
see how jealous he is! if _Mr. Such-a-one_ sat much with me at home,
or went with me to the Corso; and I _must_ go with some gentleman you
know: and the men are such ungenerous creatures, and have such ways
with them: I want money often, and this _cavaliere servente_ pays the
bills, and so the connection draws closer--_that's all_.' And your
husband! said I--'Oh, why he likes to see me well dressed; he is very
good-natured, and very charming; I love him to my heart.' And your
confessor! cried I.--'Oh! why he is _used to it_'--in the Milanese
dialect--_e assuefaa."_

"An English lady asked of an Italian
What were the actual and official duties
Of the strange thing, some women set a value on,
Which hovers oft about some married beauties,
Called 'cavalier servente,' a Pygmalion
Whose statues warm, I fear! too true 't is
Beneath his art. The dame, press'd to disclose them,
Said, Lady, I beseech you to _suppose them_."[1]

[Footnote 1: "Don Juan," Canto ix. See also "Beppo," verses 36, 37:

"But Heaven preserve Old England from such courses!
Or what becomes of damage and divorces?"]

At Venice, the tone was somewhat different from what would be
employed now by the finest lady on the Grand Canal:

"This firmly-fixed idea of subordination (which I once heard a
Venetian say, he believed must exist in heaven from one angel to
another), accounts immediately for a little conversation which I am
now going to relate.

"Here were two men taken up last week, one for murdering his
fellow-servant in cold blood, while the undefended creature had the
lemonade tray in his hand going in to serve company; the other for
breaking the new lamps lately set up with intention to light this
town in the manner of the streets at Paris. 'I hope,' said I, 'that
they will hang the murderer.' 'I rather hope,' replied a very
sensible lady who sate near me, 'that they will hang the person who
broke the lamps: for,' added she, 'the first committed his crime only
out of revenge, poor fellow!! because the other had got his mistress
from him by treachery; but this creature has had the impudence to
break our fine new lamps, all for the sake of spiting _the
Arch-duke!!_' The Arch-duke meantime hangs nobody a