ente_ must have been a serious
impediment; he was always _La plante ... a contrecarrer un pauvre tiers_,
in the words of the witty President de Brosses, who, though he did not
wholly credit the assurances he received as to the invariable innocence
of the institution, was yet far from passing on it the sweeping
judgment arrived at by most foreigners. There is no doubt that habit and
opportunity did, now and then, prove too strong for the two individuals
thrown so constantly together. 'Juxtaposition is great,' as Clough says
in his _Amours de Voyage_; but that such lapses represented the rule
rather than the exception is not borne out either by reason or record."

Mrs. Piozzi is somewhat dubious in regard to this condition of affairs
and is hardly disposed to take the charitable view which has just been
given, but the general trend of more enlightened comment seems to agree
with the Countess Cesaresco. In Sheridan's _School for Scandal_ occur
the following lines, which convey the same idea:

LADY TEAZLE.--"You know I admit you as a lover no farther than fashion
sanctions."

JOSEPH SURFACE.--"True--a mere platonic _cicisbeo_--what every wife is
entitled to."

Fragments taken somewhat at random regarding the women of several of the
more important cities of Italy may serve to give some idea regarding
their general position and condition throughout the country at large.
Writing from Milan, Mrs. Piozzi says: "There is a degree of effrontery
among the women that amazes me, and of which I had no idea till a friend
showed me, one evening, from my own box at the opera, fifty or a hundred
low shopkeepers' wives dispersed about the pit at the theatre, dressed
in men's clothes (_per disempegno_, as they call it), that they might be
more at liberty, forsooth, to clap and hiss and quarrel and jostle! I
felt shocked." Venice was, as it had ever been, a city of pleasure. The
women, generally married at fifteen, were old at thirty, and such was
the intensity of life in this "water-logged town"--as F. Hopkinson Smith
somewhat irreverently called it upon one occasion--that a traveller was
led to remark: _On ne goute pas ses plaisirs, on les avale._ Here, as in
all parts of Italy for that matter, the conditions of domestic life were
somewhat unusual at this time, as it was the custom to employ
menservants almost exclusively; as these servitors were under the
control of the master of the house, it was quite common for the women to
intrust