considerable value; some are estimated at as much as thirty thousand
lire; the Litta family at Milan own three adjoining. These facts
sufficiently indicate the importance attributed to this incident of
fashionable life.

Conversation reigns supreme in this little apartment, which Stendhal,
one of the most ingenious of modern writers, and a keen student of
Italian manners, has called a boudoir with a window opening on to a
pit. The music and the spectacle are in fact purely accessory; the
real interest of the evening is in the social meeting there, the
all-important trivialities of love that are discussed, the
assignations held, the anecdotes and gossip that creep in. The theatre
is an inexpensive meeting-place for a whole society which is content
and amused with studying itself.

The men who are admitted take their seats on one of the sofas, in the
order of their arrival. The first comer naturally is next to the
mistress of the box, but when both seats are full, if another visitor
comes in, the one who has sat longest rises, takes his leave and
departs. All move up one place, and so each in turn is next the
sovereign.

This futile gossip, or serious colloquy, these elegant trivialities of
Italian life, inevitably imply some general intimacy. The lady may be
in full dress or not, as she pleases. She is so completely at home
that a stranger who has been received in her box may call on her next
day at her residence. The foreign visitor cannot at first understand
this life of idle wit, this _dolce far niente_ on a background of
music. Only long custom and keen observation can ever reveal to a
foreigner the meaning of Italian life, which is like the free sky of