At this juncture Orsino was brought in by his nurse, a splendid creature from Saracinesca, with bright blue eyes and hair as fair as any Goth’s, a contrast to the swarthy child she carried in her arms.  Immediately the daily ovation began, and each of the three persons began to worship the baby in an especial way.  There was no more conversation, after that, for some time.  The youngest of the Saracinesca absorbed the attention of the family.  Whether he clenched his little fists, or opened his small fat fingers, whether he laughed and crowed at his grandfather’s attempts to amuse him, or struck his nurse’s rosy cheeks with his chubby hands, the result was always applause and merriment from those who looked on.  The scene recalled Joseph’s dream, in which the sheaves of his brethren bowed down to his sheaf.

After a while, however, Orsino grew sleepy and had to be taken away.  Then the little party broke up and separated.  The old prince went to his rooms to read and doze for an hour.  Corona was called away to see one of the numberless dressmakers whose shadows darken the beginning of a season in town, and Giovanni took his hat and went out.

In those days young men of society had very little to do.  The other day a German diplomatist was heard to say that Italian gentlemen seemed to do nothing but smoke, spit, and criticise.  Twenty years ago their manners might have been described less coarsely, but there was even more truth in the gist of the saying.  Not only they did nothing.  There was nothing for them to do.  They floated about in a peaceful millpool, whose placid surface reflected nothing but their own idle selves, little guessing that the dam whereby their mimic sea was confined, would shortly break with a thundering crash and empty them all into the stream of real life that flowed below.  For the few who disliked idleness there was no occupation but literature, and literature, to the Roman mind of 1867, and in the Roman meaning of the word, was scholarship.  The introduction to a literary career was supposed to be obtained only by a profound study of the classics, with a view to avoiding everything classical, both in language and ideas, except Cicero, the apostle of the ancient Roman Philistines; and the tendency to clothe stale truisms and feeble sentiments in high-sounding language is still found in Italian prose and is indirectly traceable to the same source.  As for the literature of the country since the Latins, it consisted, and still consists, in the works of the four poets, Dante, Tasso, Ariosto, and Petrarch.  Leopardi is more read now than then, but is too unhealthily melancholy to be read long by any one.  There used to be Roman princes who spent years in committing to memory the verses of those four poets, just as the young Brahman of to-day learns to recite the Rig Veda.  That was called the pursuit of literature.