So far my efforts had been successful at puzzling and misleading, but a higher triumph was in store for me. I sought out my brother, chaffed him mercilessly about his flirtations, his favourite partners and the like, paid especial court to him, flattered him in the way I knew would most please him, and made a resistless attack on his vanity! I asked him to take one _tour de valse_ with me, and finally ended by presenting him with a large bunch of violets. It is always said that the best way to detect a mask is to examine the hands and feet, but here I was a match for my brother. With an entire disregard of vanity I had encased my hands in ill-fitting gloves, and over my usual evening shoes had drawn a pair of Turkish slippers. I joined my mother and my sister, and we all three went home to the hotel, and were sound asleep before the return of my brother. The next morning I went into his room before he was up, and in the most innocent manner asked him to tell me all about the _bal masqué_, whether it was amusing, whether he advised us to go next time, whom he had seen and recognised, etc. Then, turning round and seeing my violets carefully placed in water by his bedside, I pounced upon them, saying, “How deliciously sweet! where did you get them?” “Pray leave my violets alone,” he said in a sharper tone than usual; “I’ve a particular reason for not wishing to part with them”; and this was uttered mysteriously, mingled with a certain degree of self-complacency which made me quite dread the inevitable moment when I must confess to poor Courtenay that those violets were the gift of his sister! What a terrible anti-climax to the romantic episode of the foregoing evening, as he had evidently believed the donor to be one of the beautiful Genoese ladies who were the brilliant ornaments of that brilliant society. There is a proverb connected with the proud city, that “Its sea has no fish and its fair citizens no souls.” To this I demur, and at all events there were few towns, even in Italy, where the women of the three different classes were more beautiful. In Rome, for instance, the aristocracy, with some splendid exceptions, were not famous for their personal charms, but the lower orders, especially the Trasteverini (or the inhabitants from the other side of the Tiber), were for the most part magnificent specimens of womanhood, tall, fully developed, majestic in their bearing, with not infrequently a defiant expression. My sweeping description of the Romans of the lower orders used to be, that all the women looked as if they would stab you if they could, and all the men did.