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."