ted in the
Pandolfi family. Marzio possessed more imagination than most of his
countrymen, and he had, besides, that extraordinary skill in his manual
execution of his work, which Italians have often exhibited on a large
scale. On the other hand, he was full of bombastic talk about principles
which he called great. His views concerning society, government, and the
future of his country, were entirely without balance, and betrayed an
amazing ignorance of the laws which, direct the destinies of mankind. He
suffered in a remarkable degree from that mental disease which afflicts
Italians--the worship of the fetish--of words which mean little, and are
supposed to mean much, of names in history which have been exalted by
the rhetoric of demagogues from the obscurity to which they had been
wisely consigned by the judgment of scholars. He was alternately weak
and despotic, cunning about small things which concerned his own
fortunes, and amazingly foolish about the set of ideas which he loosely
defined as politics.

Lucia's nature illustrated another phase of the Italian character, and
one which, if it is less remarkable, is much more agreeable. She
possessed the character which looks at everything from the point of view
of daily life. Without imagination, she regarded only the practical side
of existence. Her vanity was confined to a modest wish to make the best
of her appearance, while her ambition went no further than the strictest
possibility, in the shape of a marriage with Gianbattista Bordogni, and
a simple little apartment with a terrace and pots of pinks. Had she
known how much richer her father was than she suspected him of being,
the enlargement of her views for the future would have been marked by a
descent, from the fourth story of the house which was to be her
imaginary home, to the third story. It could never have entered her head
that Gianbattista ought to give up his profession until he was too old
to work any longer. In her estimation, the mere possession of money
could not justify a change of social position. She had been accustomed
from her childhood to hear her father air his views in regard to the
world in general, but his preaching had produced but little impression
upon her. When he thought she was listening in profound attention to his
discourse, she was usually wishing that he could be made to see the
absurdity of his theories. She wished also that he would sacrifice some
of his enthusiasm for the sake