Perhaps the pleasantest of all these were the balls at the Pitti.  They were so entirely sans gene.  No court dress was required save on the first day of the year, when it was de rigueur.  But absence on that occasion in no way excluded the absentee from the other balls.  Indeed, save to a new comer, no invitations to foreigners were issued, it being understood that all who had been there once were welcome ever after.  The Pitti balls were not by any means concluded by, but rather divided into two, by a very handsome and abundant supper, at which, to tell tales out of school (but then the offenders have no doubt mostly gone over to the majority), the guests used to behave abominably.  The English would seize the plates of bonbons and empty the contents bodily into their coat pockets.  The ladies would do the same with their pocket-handkerchiefs.  But the Duke’s liege subjects carried on their depredations on a far bolder scale.  I have seen large portions of fish, sauce and all, packed up in a newspaper, and deposited in a pocket.  I have seen fowls and ham share the same fate, without any newspaper at all.  I have seen jelly carefully wrapped in an Italian countess’s laced mouchoir!  I think the servants must have had orders not to allow entire bottles of wine to be carried away, for I never saw that attempted, and can imagine no other reason why.  I remember that those who affected to be knowing old hands used to recommend one to specially pay attention to the Grand Ducal Rhine wine, and remember, too, conceiving a suspicion that certain of these connoisseurs based their judgment in this matter wholly on their knowledge that the Duke possessed estates in Bohemia!

The English were exceedingly numerous in Florence at that time, and they were reinforced by a continually increasing American contingent, though our cousins had not yet begun to come in numbers rivalling our own, as has been the case recently.  By the bye, it occurs to me, that I never saw an American pillaging the supper table; though, I may add, that American ladies would accept any amount of bonbons from English blockade runners.

And the mention of American ladies at the Pitti reminds me of a really very funny story, which may be told without offence to any one now living.  I have a notion that I have seen this story of mine told somewhere, with a change of names and circumstances that spoil it, after the fashion of the people “who steal other folks’ stories and disfigure them, as gipsies do stolen children to escape detection.”

I had one evening at the Pitti, some years however after my first appearance there, a very pretty and naively charming American lady on my arm, whom I was endeavouring to amuse by pointing out to her all the personages whom I thought might interest her, as we walked through the rooms.  Dear old Dymock, the champion, was in Florence that winter, and was at the Pitti that night.—­I dare say that there