Bute was not so preoccupied with these grave matters but that he found time for a certain amount of social intercourse with the distinguished and cosmopolitan society gathered that winter in the Eternal City. He made friends with the Papal Zouaves, and often accepted the hospitality of the officers of that pleasant international corps, with one of whom, Captain the Hon. Walter Maxwell, he became very intimate. He liked to watch the Zouaves at rifle-practice in the Borghese Gardens, visited the officers on guard at the Colosseum and elsewhere, and entertained them once at a famous supper of which the recollection long survived in the corps. About Christmas time he was present at a great reception given at the Palazzo Bonimi by Mr. and Mrs. Delabarre Bodenham, and records a {89} "twenty minutes' conversation with Archbishop Manning, in a quite empty little room opening out of the reception hall." Soon after New Year he attended a dinner given in a café in the Corso by the British Committee of the Sovereign Order of the Knights of Malta, and made a speech reported by one of those present to be "the best speech of the evening and very well received." His name is also recorded as having been present at many notable religious functions--among others the imposing funeral service, in the church of the Holy Apostles, of the Grand Duke Leopold of Tuscany, at which the Pope assisted and gave the final absolution. Bute saw much, during these weeks in Rome, of the savants and scholars--by no means all sympathisers with the Papal regime--then resident in the city, and his modesty of demeanour, earnestness, and intelligence made a very favourable impression on the varied society with which he was brought into contact. In those days he liked to be amused as well as interested; and there was plenty of amusement to be found at that time in the kaleidoscopic throngs of visitors which the unique and unrivalled charms of Rome attracted within her gates. One of his most agreeable acquaintances--quite outside ecclesiastical and antiquarian circles--was Olivia Lady Sebright, the clever and charming sister of an Irish peer who had been his contemporary at Oxford. Her lively persiflage was doubtless a pleasant and piquant contrast to the discourses of Bute's learned acquaintances; and it was often jestingly remarked in Anglo-Roman society that Lady Sebright seemed to do all the talking and Lord Bute all the listening. He alludes to her in one of his letters as "a very vivacious lady, who would {90} have her joke even in the Catacombs." Lady Sebright was included in the party which Bute invited to join him in the yachting cruise in the Mediterranean which he made after leaving Italy in the summer of 1870.