From the nature of this connection, it could not be an easy matter to find a Cicisbeo who would be equally agreeable to the husband and wife. At the beginning of the institution, the husbands, as I have been informed, preferred the platonic swains, who professed only the metaphysicks of love, and whose lectures, they imagined, might refine their wives ideas, and bring them to the same way of thinking; in many instances, no doubt, it would happen, that the platonic admirer asked with _less seraphic ends_; but these instances serve only as proofs that the husbands were mistaken in their men; for however absurd it may appear in the eyes of some people, to imagine that the husbands believe it is only a platonic connection which subsists between their wives and the Cicisbeos; it is still more absurd to believe, as some strangers who have passed through this country seem to have done, that this whole system of Cicisbeism was from the beginning, and is now, an universal system of adultery connived at by every Italian husband. To get clear of one difficulty, those gentlemen fall into another much more inexplicable; by supposing that the men, who of all the inhabitants of Europe were the most scrupulous with regard to their wives chastity, should acquiesce in, and in a manner become subservient to, their prostitution. In support of this strange doctrine, they assert, that the husbands being the Cicisbeos of other women, cannot enjoy this privilege on any other terms; and are therefore contented to sacrifice their wives for the sake of their mistresses. That some individuals may be profligate enough to act in this manner, I make no doubt. Similar arrangements we hear instances of in every country; but that such a system is general, or any thing near it, in Italy, seems to me perfectly incredible, and is contrary to the best information I have received since I have been here. It is also urged, that most of the married men of quality in Italy act in the character of Cicisbeo to some woman or other; and those who are not Platonic lovers, ought to suspect that the same liberties are taken with their wives which they take with the spouses of their neighbours; and therefore their suffering a man to visit their wives in the character of a cavaliero servente, is in effect conniving at their own cuckoldom. But this does not follow as an absolute consequence; for men have a wonderful faculty of deceiving themselves on such occasions. So great is the infatuation of their vanity, that the same degree of complaisance, which they consider as the effect of a very natural and excusable weakness, when indulged by any woman for themselves, they would look on as a horrible enormity if admitted by their wives for another man; so that whatever degree of licentiousness may exist in consequence of this system, I am convinced the majority of husbands make exceptions in their own favour, and that their ladies find means to satisfy each individual that he is