Vanderbilt married Marlborough
and took the record from her. The Prince and Princess of Naples live at
their Neapolitan capital, and will not do much to help things in Rome.
Besides which he is very delicate and passes for not being any too fond
of the world.

What makes things worse is that the great nobles are mostly "land poor,"
and even the richer ones burned their fingers in the craze for
speculation that turned all Rome upside down in the years following 1870
and Italian unity, when they naively imagined their new capital was to
become again after seventeen centuries the metropolis of the world. Whole
quarters of new houses were run up for a population that failed to
appear; these houses now stand empty and are fast going to ruin. So that
little in the way of entertaining is to be expected from the bankrupts.
They are a genial race, these Italian nobles, and welcome rich strangers
and marry them with much enthusiasm--just a shade too much, perhaps--the
girl counting for so little and her _dot_ for so much in the matrimonial
scale. It is only necessary to keep open house to have the pick of the
younger ones as your guests. They will come to entertainments at
American houses and bring all their relations, and dance, and dine, and
flirt with great good humor and persistency; but if there is not a good
solid fortune in the background, in the best of securities, the prettiest
American smiles never tempt them beyond flirtation; the season over, they
disappear up into their mountain villas to wait for a new importation
from the States.

In Rome, as well as in the other Italian cities, there are, of course,
still to be found Americans in some numbers (where on the Continent will
you not find them?), living quietly for study or economy. But they are
not numerous or united enough to form a society; and are apt to be
involved in bitter strife among themselves.

Why, you ask, should Americans quarrel among themselves?

Some years ago I was passing the summer months on the Rhine at a tiny
German watering-place, principally frequented by English, who were all
living together in great peace and harmony, until one fatal day, when an
Earl appeared. He was a poor Irish Earl, very simple and unoffending,
but he brought war into that town, heart-burnings, envy, and backbiting.
The English colony at once divided itself into two camps, those who knew
the Earl and those who did not. And peace fled from our little society.
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