well knowing that nothing kills romance so swiftly and surely as the bare blunt prose of close and constant proximity.  And I, like other gentlemen of my rank and class, gave my twice-wedded wife her liberty—­the last hours of liberty she would ever know.  I left her to busy herself with the trifles she best loved—­trifles of dress and personal adornment, for which many women barter away their soul’s peace and honor, and divest themselves of the last shred of right and honest principle merely to outshine others of their own sex, and sow broadcast heart-burnings, petty envies, mean hatreds and contemptible spites, where, if they did but choose, there might be a widely different harvest.

It is easy to understand the feelings of Marie Stuart when she arrayed herself in her best garments for her execution:  it was simply the heroism of supreme vanity, the desire to fascinate if possible the very headsman.  One can understand any beautiful woman being as brave as she.  Harder than death itself would it have seemed to her had she been compelled to appear on the scaffold looking hideous.  She was resolved to make the most of her charms so long as life lasted.  I thought of that sweet-lipped, luscious-smiling queen as I parted from my wife for a few brief hours:  royal and deeply injured lady though she was, she merited her fate, for she was treacherous—­there can be no doubt of that.  Yet most people reading her her story pity her—­I know not why.  It is strange that so much of the world’s sympathy is wasted on false women!

I strolled into one of the broad loggie of the hotel, from whence I could see a portion of the Piazza del Popolo, and lighting a cigar, I leisurely watched the frolics of the crowd.  The customary fooling proper to the day was going on, and no detail of it seemed to pall on the good-natured, easily amused folks who must have seen it all so often before.  Much laughter was being excited by the remarks of a vender of quack medicines, who was talking with extreme volubility to a number of gayly dressed girls and fishermen.  I could not distinguish his words, but I judged he was selling the “elixir of love,” from his absurd amatory gestures—­an elixir compounded, no doubt, of a little harmless eau sucre.

Flags tossed on the breeze, trumpets brayed, drums beat; improvisatores twanged their guitars and mandolins loudly to attract attention, and failing in their efforts, swore at each other with the utmost joviality and heartiness; flower-girls and lemonade-sellers made the air ring with their conflicting cries:  now and then a shower of chalky confetti flew out from adjacent windows, dusting with white powder the coats of the passers-by; clusters of flowers tied with favors of gay-colored ribbon were lavishly flung at the feet of bright-eyed peasant girls, who rejected or accepted them at pleasure, with light words of badinage or playful repartee; clowns danced and tumbled, dogs barked, church bells clanged, and through all the waving width of color and movement crept the miserable, shrinking forms of diseased and loathly beggars whining for a soldo, and clad in rags that barely covered their halting, withered limbs.