The expenses of a fashionable marriage were considerable. There were always several festive ceremonies in the bride’s house. The first was the [Sidenote: _Mutinelli, Ult. 86; Goldoni, vol. i. chap. xxvi._] signature of the contract; the second, which followed soon afterwards, was a gathering of all the relations and friends of the two families with a sort of standing collation, and it was on this occasion that the future bridegroom gave his betrothed the first present, which was generally a big diamond set in other stones, and was called the ‘ricordino,’ the ‘little remembrance.’ A few days before the wedding the two families and their friends met again, and if the man’s mother was still alive it was she who gave the bride a pearl necklace; otherwise the duty fell to one of his near female relations. This pearl necklace was thought absolutely indispensable for the honour of the family, and the bride was bound to put it on at once and to wear it till the end of the first year of her marriage. Where it would have caused financial difficulty it was simply hired for the time, and was returned to the jeweller at the end of the year. After her marriage every well-born woman took a ‘cicisbeo’ or ‘cavalier servente.’ These cavaliers were in most cases, especially at the beginning [Sidenote: _Rom. ix. 13._] of the century, neither young, nor handsome, nor the least lover-like, though there were [Sidenote: _Tassini, under ‘Grassi.’_] exceptions to the rule. The choice of them was often the occasion of the first conjugal dispute, and a lady of the Condulmer family retired to a convent for life because her husband objected to the cavalier whom she wanted. The serving cavalier accompanied his lady on all occasions, for the husband never did, and the two were [Sidenote: _Rom. viii. 207, 303, and ix. II; Molmenti, Vita Priv._] seen everywhere together, and especially under the felse of the gondola; for ladies never used the gondola uncovered, even on beautiful summer evenings. And they were perpetually out, so that grave historians inform us that they only spent a few hours of the night in their palaces, and during the day the time they needed for dressing. When required, the ‘cicisbeo’ waited on his lady instead of her maid; her smallest caprices were his law, and she dragged him after her everywhere, to mass, benediction, and the sermon. ‘The object of mass is to go to walk,’ said Businallo in one of his satires, after saying that the proper purpose of pilgrimages was to make a great deal of noise. Not unfrequently the cicisbei were mere adventurers who pretended to be great nobles from other Italian cities, and to have left their homes in consequence of some misfortune.