They
accompanied their voices with the forte-piano, and sung a thousand
buffo songs, with all that gay voluptuousness for which their country
is renowned.
"The school, however, is running to ruin apace; and perhaps the
conduct of the married women here may contribute to make such
_conservatorios_ useless and neglected. When the Duchess of Montespan
asked the famous Louison D'Arquien, by way of insult, as she pressed
too near her, '_Comment alloit le metier_?' '_Depuis que les dames
s'en melent_,' (replied the courtesan with no improper spirit,) '_il
ne vaut plus rien_.'"
Describing Florence, she says:--
"Sir Horace Mann is sick and old; but there are conversations at his
house of a Saturday evening, and sometimes a dinner, to which we have
been almost always asked."
So much for Walpole's assertion that "she had broken with his Horace,
because he could not invite her husband with the Italian nobility."
She held her own, if she did not take the lead, in whatever society
she happened to be thrown, and no one could have objected to Piozzi
without breaking with her. In point of fact, no one did object to
him.
One of her notes on Naples is:
"Well, well! if the Neapolitans do bury Christians like dogs, they
make some singular compensations we will confess, by nursing dogs
like Christians. A very veracious man informed me yester morning,
that his poor wife was half broken-hearted at hearing such a
Countess's dog was run over; 'for,' said he, 'having suckled the
pretty creature herself, she loved it like one of her children.
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