A remarkable trait among the Italians is the good-nature with which they take personal jokes, and their callousness to ridicule of personal defects.  Jests which would provoke a blow from an Anglo-Saxon, or wound and rankle in the memory for life, are here taken in good part.  A cripple often joins in the laugh at his own deformity; and the rough carelessness with which such personal misfortunes are alluded to is amazing to us of a more sensitive organization.  I well remember the extreme difficulty I once had in breaking an Italian servant of the habit of announcing an acquaintance, whose foreign name he could not pronounce, and who had the misfortune to be humpbacked, as “quel gobbo” (that hunchback).  He could not understand why he should not call him a gobbo, if he was a gobbo; and in spite of all I could do, he would often open the door and say, “Signore, quel gobbo desidera farle una visita,” (that hunchback wishes to make you a visit,) when “quel gobbo” was right on his heels.  The Italians are also singularly free from that intense self-consciousness which runs in our English blood, and is the root of shyness, awkwardness, and affectation.  Unconsciousness is the secret of grace, freedom, and simplicity.  We never forget ourselves.  The Italians always forget themselves.  They are sometimes proud, very seldom vain, and never affected.  The converse peculiarity follows, of course.  Having no self-consciousness, they are as little sensitive to their defects as vain of their charms.  The models who come to the studios, and who have been selected for their beauty, despite the silent flattery incident to their very profession, and the lavish praise they constantly hear expressed, are always simple, natural, and unaffected.  If you tell them they are very beautiful, they say, "Ma che?" deprecatorily, or perhaps admit the fact.  But they are better pleased to have their dress admired than their faces.  Of the former they are vain, of the latter they are not.  For the most part, I think they rather wonder what it is we admire in them and think worthy of perpetuating in stone or color.  The other day I was so much struck with the ear of a model, from whom I was working, that I said to her,—­“You have, without exception, the most beautiful ear I ever saw.”  She laughed somewhat derisively, and said, "Ma che?"—­“It does not seem to give you any pleasure,” I continued, “to know that you have a very handsome ear.”—­"Che mi importa," answered she, "se sia bello o brutto?  E sempre lo stesso, brutto o bello, bello o brutto.  Ecco!"[C] —­“You don’t care, then, whether you are handsome or ugly?”—­"Eh! cosa a me m’importa,—­se sono brutto o bello non so,—­a me e lo stesso." This was all I could get from her.

[Footnote C:  “What do I care whether it is handsome or ugly?  It’s all the same to me,—­ugly or handsome,—­handsome or ugly.  There!”]