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. The old noble who turns out his gala liveries and other bedizenments on a festal day, does it to make up his part of the general show, which is for the gratification of all classes, and is a gratification to them. But it is a curious commentary of the past history of Italy that, as between city and city, there is the feeling, the wish, and the ambition, to crush and humble a rival community by superior magnificence. Nobody expected much immediate gratification from attending the Cardinal's reception. There was little to be done save to bow to the host and to each other. Ices were handed round--none the less because it was bitterly cold--and cakes and comfits. Old Contessa Carini, who had a grandchild at home, and no money to buy bonbons with, emptied half a plateful of them into her handkerchief, the old servant who handed them helping her; and the Cardinal, who happened to be standing by, smilingly telling her to give the little one his benediction with them. The brave old Contessa still kept her carriage, as it became a Carini to do; though she starved her poor old shrivelled body to enable her to keep her half-starved horses. And "society" gave her its applause for struggling so hard to do that which it became her to do in the state of life to which it had pleased God to call her; and no soul in the room dreamed of thinking the less of her because of the sharp poverty that confessed itself in her eagerness to make the most of the opportunity of the Legate's hospitality.