Be the causes what they may, the Roman nobility has many characteristics
peculiar to it and to no other aristocracy. It is cosmopolitan by its
foreign marriages, renewed in every generation; it is patriarchal and
feudal by its own unbroken traditions of family life; and it is only
essentially Roman by its speech and social customs. It has undergone
great vicissitudes during twenty years; but most of these features remain
in spite of new and larger parties, new and bitter political hatreds, new
ideas of domestic life, and new fashions in dress and cookery.

In considering an account of the life of Giovanni Saracinesca from the
time when, in 1865, he was thirty years of age, down to the present day,
it is therefore just that he should be judged with a knowledge of some of
these peculiarities of his class. He is not a Roman of the people like
Giovanni Cardegna, the great tenor, and few of his ideas have any
connection with those of the singer; but he has, in common with him, that
singular simplicity of character which he derives from his Roman descent
upon the male side, and in which will be found the key to many of his
actions both good and bad--a simplicity which loves peace, but cannot
always refrain from sudden violence, which loves and hates strongly and
to some purpose.




CHAPTER II.

The hour was six o'clock, and the rooms of the Embassy were as full as
they were likely to be that day. There would doubtless have been more
people had the weather been fine; but it was raining heavily, and below,
in the vast court that formed the centre of the palace, the lamps of