And there is the good as well as the seamy side (not, alas, to the
old liveries! for they had been mostly turned and turned again too
often); but to the feelings and social manners which prompted such a
manifestation of them. At least, in such a condition of social
manners and feelings mere wealth was not installed on the throne of
Mammon in the eyes of all men. If one of the old coaches was more
pitiably rickety than the rest; if the ancient-fashioned coat of
some long-descended marchese was itself as threadbare as the old
family liveries; if some widowed contessa had crept out from the
last habitable corner of her dilapidated palazzo, where she was
known to live on a modicum of chicory-water, brought in a tumbler
from the nearest cafe, and a crust; not on any such account was
there the smallest tendency towards a derisive smile on the lip, or
in the mind of any man, at these pitiable attempts to keep up
appearances, which everybody considered it right to keep up. Not on
any such account was the stately courtesy of the Legate's reception
in the smallest degree modified. It was subject, indeed, to many
modifications; but these were wholly irrespective of any such
circumstances.
There is a peculiar sort of naivete about Italian ostentation, which
robs it of all its offensiveness. Nobody exhibits their finery or
grandeur for the sake of crushing another; nobody feels themselves
crushed by the exhibition of it.
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