56

LIFE OF COLONEL MACERONI.

recommended to Torlonia, who supplied them with funds,gave them dinners and balls, as usual in such cases. Tor-lonia found it convenient to depute me to accompany thesepeople to his boxes at the theatres, to dine with them at histable, to pay them money, and settle their accounts.Amongst the acquaintance I made in this manner at Rome ,were Lady Mountcashel, Lord Cloncurry, Sir Harry Neagle,Cardinal Erskine, Lord and Lady Elgin, and a multitude ofsuch birds of passage, whose names I do not now remember.One rather curious coincidence I do remember, which is,that four British peeresses with whom I was then acquaintedat Rome , were shortly afterwards divorced from their hus-bands. It is truly said, “ that evil communication corruptsgood manners.” Whether the “ example ” of cicisbeoism,which those ladies saw so much of at Rome , had any effectin undermining their sterling British virtue, I cannot decide.

Bad and subversive of all domestic happiness, or rathercomfort, as is the cavaliere servante arrangement of theItalians ; bad as it is, the poor Italian women have oftenthe very reasonable and well-founded excuse of having beenunited to a man with whom they could only by some greatchance have any sort of sympathy, in such early marriagescontracted by the proxy of parents and relations. It is, in-deed, a matter rather of surprise, that any marriage soentered into, should ever prove other than a scene of unmi-tigated strife, contradiction, and violence. Such are theresults of ill-assorted matches in England. In Italy , how-ever, a compromise is generally regarded as the lesser evil.

In the course of the subsequent intercourse with society,both parties unwittingly fall in with others, more suiting to jtheir moral and physical affinities. It must not be sup-posed, that upon a sympathetic feeling being developedbetween the parties, an immediate declaration of love—private assignations—exposures to servants and to rustics,