e Florentine leaders who owned palaces, and their foreign imitators
who contented themselves with a "_Mezzanine_," seated themselves at
well-provided tea-tables and entertained a regularly flowing throng of
tea-drinking, scandal-mongering women, accompanied by a circle of men of
some interest and distinction. In the evening, Florence did still more.
By this time, the _salons_ were suffocating and airless. Yet there were
few nights in the week when, somewhere, the sober reception was not
heightened to a ball, sometimes impromptu, more often formally
prearranged. Morning found the indefatigable leisure world scattered
through one or another of the great galleries, where, before the
masterpieces of a by-gone Italy, they recounted all the questionable
incidents of the preceding day. And never a woman but could tell the
length of time that Countess X---- had remained in the conservatory; or
the variety of rouge used by that preposterous Mademoiselle C----, whose
mother should really adopt spectacles.

For a matter of four or five weeks Ivan, still living in the glamour of
this land of the death-in-life, permitted himself to float, passively,
round and round the fashionable whirlpool. It was a wonder he endured
so long; for, from, the first, he was lionized unbearably, and was soon
taken up by the very cream of Florentine society: (a little clique
really difficult for foreigners to penetrate); till behold! the old
Principessa, head of the lofty house of Contarini, reached a stage of
liking and familiarity where she did not hesitate to tap her Prince on
the arm with her fan, commanding his escort during her formal progress
through her sparsely furnished but highly exclusive _salons_.

Signs of awakening were, however, plainly visible in Ivan's manner
before the day of the accident which revolutionized his winter.

Gregoriev, like every other visitor to the city, had observed, and
frequently stared at, a certain person who constantly haunted the best
of the galleries and resorts--Pitti, Uffizi, Academia, the shop of
Vecellio on Lung' Arno, and, finally, the Cascine. She was a woman of
rather odd aspect, somewhere near middle age, who was always followed by
a maid, but otherwise went alone, unspoken to. Despite her complete
isolation, she was unquestionably a person of breeding, probably also,
considering the appointments of her carriage, of wealth. More than once
it had been on Ivan's tongue to ask about her; but the question