comfort to be found in a house that harboured poets; for that she remembered Mr. Pope’s praise made her aunt very troublesome and conceited, while his numberless caprices would have employed ten servants to wait on him; and he gave one,’ (said she) ’no amends by his talk neither, for he only sate dozing all day, when the sweet wine was out, and made his verses chiefly in the night; during which season he kept himself awake by drinking coffee, which it was one of the maids’ business to make for him, and they took it by turns.’”

At Milan she institutes a delicate inquiry:  “The women are not behind-hand in openness of confidence and comical sincerity.  We have all heard much of Italian cicisbeism; I had a mind to know how matters really stood; and took the nearest way to information by asking a mighty beautiful and apparently artless young creature, not noble, how that affair was managed, for there is no harm done I am sure, said I:  ‘Why no,’ replied she, ’no great harm to be sure:  except wearisome attentions from a man one cares little about; for my own part,’ continued she, ’I detest the custom, as I 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.