The society of the eighteenth century was primarily concerned with the pursuit of sensuous enjoyment. In Italy especially ‘the cosmic forces existed but in order to serve the endless divertissement of superficial and brainless beings, in whose eyes the sun’s only mission was to illumine picturesque cavalcades and water-parties, as that of the moon was to touch with trembling ray the amorous forest glades.’ Monnier’s vivid pen-picture of eighteenth century Venetian society applies, with allowance made for change of scene and local color, to all the greater Italian cities. ‘What equivocal figures! What dubious pasts! Law (of Mississippi bubble fame) lives by gambling, as does the Chevalier Desjardins, his brother in the Bastille, his wife in a lodging-house; the Count de Bonneval, turbaned, sitting on a rug with legs crossed, worships Allah, carries on far-reaching intrigues and is poisoned by the Turks; Lord Baltimore, travelling with his physician and a seraglio of eight women, with a pair of negro guards; Ange Goudar, a wit, a cheat at cards, a police spy and perjurer, rascally, bold, and ugly; and his wife Sarah, once a servant in a London tavern, marvellously beautiful, who receives the courtly world at her palace in Pausilippo near Naples, and subjugates it with her charm; disguised maidens, false princes, fugitive financiers, literary blacklegs, Greeks, chevaliers of all industries, wearers of every order, splenetic _grands seigneurs_, and the kings of Voltaire’s _Candide_. Of such is the Italian society of the eighteenth century composed.