The dame, press'd to disclose them,
Said, Lady, I beseech you to _suppose them_."[1]
[Footnote 1: "Don Juan," Canto ix. See also "Beppo," verses 36, 37:
"But Heaven preserve Old England from such courses!
Or what becomes of damage and divorces?"]
At Venice, the tone was somewhat different from what would be
employed now by the finest lady on the Grand Canal:
"This firmly-fixed idea of subordination (which I once heard a
Venetian say, he believed must exist in heaven from one angel to
another), accounts immediately for a little conversation which I am
now going to relate.
"Here were two men taken up last week, one for murdering his
fellow-servant in cold blood, while the undefended creature had the
lemonade tray in his hand going in to serve company; the other for
breaking the new lamps lately set up with intention to light this
town in the manner of the streets at Paris. 'I hope,' said I, 'that
they will hang the murderer.' 'I rather hope,' replied a very
sensible lady who sate near me, 'that they will hang the person who
broke the lamps: for,' added she, 'the first committed his crime only
out of revenge, poor fellow!! because the other had got his mistress
from him by treachery; but this creature has had the impudence to
break our fine new lamps, all for the sake of spiting _the
Arch-duke!!_' The Arch-duke meantime hangs nobody at all; but sets
his prisoners to work upon the roads, public buildings, &c., where
they labour in their chains; and where, strange to tell! they often
insult passengers who refuse them alms when asked as they go by; and,
stranger still, they are not punished for it when they do.
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