ome intimate with its inmates)--one day we had just been _ringing_ an
Etruscan vase, and liked the sound thereof; and examining the painting,
we liked that too; and therefore, agreeing as to price, completed the
purchase, and were sitting between old husband and young wife, round a
brazier mounted on an ancient tripod, with a handful of gems, _loculis
quae custoditur eburnis_, talking carelessly, and taking our
_impressions_ of them, and of the stones, as we talked. It was a fete
day, and, now we came to notice it, Madame B---- was en _grande
toilette_, and had been hearing Padre S---- preach, as she informed us,
at St Carlo's in the Corso. When she heard we had not been there, she
sighed for our sakes--"Our friend _should_ have heard Padre S----
to-day, is it not so?" to her husband, who assented to this good opinion
of the Padre: "It was such a good sermon! all about doing as you would
be done by--no loophole for a self-deceiver to escape by. I only wish
A---- had been there to hear it." "Bagatello!" said Signor B----,
stirring the brazier, "Do you think he would not have cheated Lord V----
just the same in this head of Medusa, which he palmed off upon him for
an antique, knowing it was a Calandrelli? Good sermons are thrown away
upon some people." "Well," sighed the lady, looking up to the ceiling,
and then taking a second dose of it--"well, at least we may apply it _to
ourselves_." "Not a bit of it. _We_ never apply any thing to ourselves.
Do you think, for instance, when I married you, I sought to mate me with
a lark, or a nightingale--_risponde_." She had no difficulty in doing
so. "And was I not a lark till my poor sister died--_poverella_--eighteen
months ago?" "_Si, Signora!_ but _since_ that time you treat me with
coldness; are always looking up to the sky; and always telling me your
soul is with her soul in Paradise. No Paradise for me! What think you,
sir?" "We always sided with those who were suffering from the loss of
friends." "_Bene, bene_, for three months or so--'twas all very well,
natural. But beyond this? Besides, though it were ever so sincere--what
was the use of it?" "Oh! of _no use_, of course," said we. "I shall
never give over mourning for her, I promise you that," said the lady,
much moved. The husband shrugged his shoulders; said, "That all women
were more or less foolish;" and asked us if we were married? Before we
had time to answer, in came Padre S----, whose sermon had made such
impression