insipidity and emptiness.

But all this does not make him less interesting as a figure in that
amusing literarified society; and we may be glad to see him in Parma
with Signor Torelli's eyes, as he "issues smug, ornate, with his
well-fitting, polished shoe, his handsome leg in its neat stocking,
his whole immaculate person, and his demure visage, and, gently
sauntering from Casa Caprara, takes his way toward Casa Landi."

I do not know Casa Landi; I have never seen it; and yet I think I can
tell you of it: a gloomy-fronted pile of Romanesque architecture, the
lower story remarkable for its weather-stained, vermiculated stone,
and the ornamental iron gratings at the windows. The _porte-cochere_
stands wide open and shows the leaf and blossom of a lovely garden
inside, with a tinkling fountain in the midst. The marble nymphs and
naiads inhabiting the shrubbery and the water are already somewhat
time-worn, and have here and there a touch of envious mildew; but as
yet their noses are unbroken, and they have all the legs and arms
that the sculptor designed them with; and the fountain, which after
disasters must choke, plays prettily enough over their nude
loveliness; for it is now the first half of the eighteenth century,
and Casa Landi is the uninvaded sanctuary of Illustrissimi and
Illustrissime. The resplendent porter who admits our melodious Abbate
Carlo, and the gay lackey who runs before his smiling face to open
the door of the _sala_ where the company is assembled, may have had
nothing to speak of for breakfast, but they are full of zeal for the
grandeur they serve, and would not know what the rights of man were if
you told them. They, too, have their idleness and their intrigues and
their life of pleasure; but, poor souls! they fade pitiably in the
magnificence of that noble assembly in the sala. What coats of silk