Italian hours . eallyvery fine, and he prides himself greatly on his cultivated tone,to which he calls my attention. He has very little good to sayabout the Sienese nobility. They are proprio d origine egoista— whatever that may be — and there are many who cant writetheir names. This may be calumny; but I doubt whether themost blameless of them all could have spoken more delicately ofa lady of peculiar personal appearance who had been dining nearme. Shes too fat, I grossly said on her leaving the room. Thewaiter shook his head with a little sniff: E troppo lady and her companion
Italian hours . eallyvery fine, and he prides himself greatly on his cultivated tone,to which he calls my attention. He has very little good to sayabout the Sienese nobility. They are proprio d origine egoista— whatever that may be — and there are many who cant writetheir names. This may be calumny; but I doubt whether themost blameless of them all could have spoken more delicately ofa lady of peculiar personal appearance who had been dining nearme. Shes too fat, I grossly said on her leaving the room. Thewaiter shook his head with a little sniff: E troppo lady and her companion were the party whom, thinking Imight relish a little company — I had been dining alone for aweek — he gleefully announced to me as newly arrived Ameri-cans. They were Americans, I found, who wore, pinned to theirheads in permanence, the black lace veil or mantilla, conveyedtheir beans to their mouth with a knife, and spoke a strange rau-cous Spanish. They were in fine compatriots from Montevideo. [354 ]. THE RED PALACE, SIENA. SIENA EARLY AND LATE The genius of old Siena, however, would make little of anystress of such distinctions; one representative of a far-off socialplatitude being about as much in order as another as he standsbefore the great loggia of the Casino di Nobili, the club of thebest society. The nobility, which is very numerous and veryrich, is still, says the apparently competent native I began byquoting, perfectly feudal and uplifted and separate. Morallyand intellectually, behind the walls of its palaces, the fourteenthcentury, its thrilling to think, has nt ceased to hang on. Thereis no bourgeoisie to speak of; immediately after the aristocracycome the poor people, who are very poor indeed. My friends ac-count of these matters made me wish more than ever, as a loverof the preserved social specimen, of type at almost any price, thatone were nt, a helpless victim of the historic sense, reduced sim-ply to staring at black stones and peeping up stately
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