ssessed by the devil, and was buried
ignominiously outside the gates, in his nook of the Black Forest. But on
the whole they were happy, no doubt; men of simple habits and of worthy
lives."

"You care for art yourself, M. Della Rocca?"

There came a gleam of interest in her handsome, languid, hazel eyes, as
she turned them upon him.

"Every Italian does," he answered her. "I do not think we are ever, or I
think, if ever, very seldom connoisseurs in the way that your Englishman
or Frenchman is so. We are never very learned as to styles and dates; we
cannot boast the huckster's eye of the northern bric-a-brac hunter; it
is quite another thing with us; we love art as children their nurses'
tales and cradle-songs. It is a familiar affection with us, and
affection is never very analytical. The Robbia over the chapel-door, the
apostle-pot that the men in the stables drink out of; the Sodoma or the
Beato Angelico that hangs before our eyes daily as we dine; the old
bronze _secchia_ that we wash our hands in as boys in the Loggia--these
are all so homely and dear to us that we grow up with a love for them
all as natural as our love for our mothers. You will say the children of
all rich people see beautiful and ancient things from their birth: so
they do, but not _as_ we see them. Here they are too often degraded to
the basest household uses, and made no more account of than the dust
which gathers on them; but that very neglect of them makes them the more
kindred to us. Art elsewhere is the guest of the salon--with us she is
the playmate of the infant and the serving-maid of the peasant: the
mules may drink from an Etruscan sarcophagus, and the pigeons be fed
from a _patina_ of the twelfth century."

* * *

Taste, mon cher Della Rocca, is the only sure guarantee in these
matters. Women, believe me, never have any principle. Principle is a
backbone, and no woman--except bodily--ever possesses any backbone.
Their priests and their teachers and their mothers fill them with
doctrines and conventionalities--all things of mere word and wind. No
woman has any settled principles; if she have any vague ones, it is the
uttermost she ever reaches, and those can always be overturned by any
man who has any influence over her. But Taste is another matter
altogether. A woman whose taste is excellent is preserved from all
eccentricities and most follies. You never see a woman of good sense
_afficher_ her improprieties o