discreditable one.  The spreading of such a banquet before such an assemblage of animals as had gone up into that ark was a leading them into unwonted temptation which was hardly judicious.  Not that the foreigners were by any means the worst offenders against decent behavior there.  If they carried away bushels of bonbons in their loaded pockets, the Italians would consign to the same receptacles whole fowls, vast blocks of galantine, and even platefuls of mayonnaise, packed up in paper brought thither for the purpose.  They were like troops plundering a taken town.  Despite the enormous quantity of loot thus carried off, inexhaustible fresh supplies refurnished the board again and again till all were satisfied.  I never saw English or Americans pocket aught save bonbons, which seemed to be considered fair game on all sides, but the quantity of these that I have seen made prizes of was something prodigious.

The grand duchess had hardly more to say for herself than the grand duke, and her manner was less calculated to please her visitors.  That which in the grand duke was evidently shyness and want of ready wit, took in the grand duchess the appearance of hauteur and the distant manner due to pride.  She was a sister of the king of Naples, and was liked by no one.  The one truly affable member of the court circle, whose manner and bearing really had something of royal grace and graciousness, was the dowager grand duchess, the widow of the late grand duke, who to all outward appearance was as young as, and a far more elegant-looking woman than, the reigning grand duchess.  She had been a princess of the royal family of Saxony, and was no doubt in all respects, intellectual and moral as well as social, a far more highly cultivated woman than the scion of the Bourbon House of Naples.  She was the late grand duke’s second wife, and not the mother of the reigning duke.

Why were all these balls given—­at no small cost of money and trouble—­by the grand duke and duchess?  Why did his Serene Imperial and Royal Highness intimate to the English minister his wish that every traveling Briton from Capel Court or Bloomsbury should be brought to share his hospitality and the pleasures of his society?  The matter was simply this:  His Serene Highness was venturing a small fish to catch a large one.  As a good and provident ruler, anxious for the prosperity and well-being of his subjects, he was making a bid for the valuable patronage of the British Cockney.  He was acting the part of land-lord of a gratuitous “free-and-easy,” in the hope of making Florence an attractive place of residence to that large class of nomad English to whom gratuitous court-balls once a week appeared to be a near approach to those “Saturnia regna” when the rivers ran champagne and plum-puddings grew on all the bushes.  And it cannot be doubted that the grand duke’s patriotic endeavors were crowned with success, and that his expenditure in wax-lights, music, ices and suppers was returned tenfold to the shopkeepers and hotel and lodging-house keepers of his capital.