'Never was any creature on earth so exquisitely sensitive, so easily shocked. To live with her is to walk upon eggshells. Of course, it is very nice in a wife; very "proper," as the English say; but it is not amusing. It amused me at first, but now it seems to me a defect. She has brought me down to this terribly damp and very green place, where it rains every day and night. There is a library without novels; there is a cellar without absinthe; there is a _cuisine_ without tomatoes, or garlic, or any oil at all; there is an admirably-ordered establishment, so quiet that I fancy I am in a penitentiary. There are some adorably fine horses, and there are acres of glasshouses used to grow fruits that we throw in Italy to the pigs. By the way, there are also several of our field flowers in the conservatories. We eat pretty nearly all day; there is nothing else to do. Outside, the scenery is oppressively green, the green of spinach; there is no variety, there are no ilexes and there are no olives. I understand now why the English painters give such staring colours; unless the colours scream, you don't see them in this aqueous, dim atmosphere. That is why a benign Providence has made the landscape a _purée aux epinards_. 'I think the air here, inside and out, must weigh heavily; it lies on one's lungs like a sponge. I once went down in a diving-bell when I was a boy; I have the sensation in this country of being always down in a diving-bell. The scamp Toniello, whom you may remember as having played Leporello to my Don Giovanno ever since we were lads, amuses himself with making love to all the pretty maidens in the village; but, then, I must not do that--now. They are not very pretty either. They have very big teeth, and very long upper lips. Their skins, however, are admirable. For a horse's skin and a woman's, there is no land comparable to England. It is the country of grooming.' _From the Principessa di San Zenone, Coombe Bysset, to Lady Gwendolen Chichester, British Embassy, Petersburg._