Some statistician has asserted that no less than a hundred thousand people awake every day in London, not one of whom knows where he will pass the night. Now, Florence is but a small city, and the lacquered-boot class bear but a slight proportion to the shoeless herd of humanity. Yet there is a very tolerable sprinkling of well-dressed, well-got-up individuals, who daily arise without the very vaguest conception of who is to house them, fire them, light them, and cigar them for the evening. They are an interesting class, and have this strong appeal to human sympathy, that not one of them, by any possible effort, could contribute to his own support. They toil not, neither do they spin. They have the very fewest of social qualities; they possess no conversational gifts; they are not even moderately good reporters of the passing events of the day. And yet, strange to say, the world they live in seems to have some need of them. Are they the last relics of a once gifted class,--worn out, effete, and exhausted,--degenerated like modern Greeks from those who once shook the Parthenon? Or are they what anatomists call “rudimentary structures,”--the first abortive attempts of nature to fashion something profitable and good? Who knows? Amidst this class the Nina's arrival was announced as the happiest of all tidings; and speculation immediately set to work to imagine who would be the favorites of the house; what would be its habits and hours; would she again enter the great world of society, or would she, as her quiet, unannounced arrival portended, seek a less conspicuous position? Nor was this the mere talk of the cafés and the Cascine. The _salons_ were eagerly discussing the very same theme. In certain social conditions a degree of astuteness is acquired as to who may and who may not be visited, that, in its tortuous intricacy of reasons, would puzzle the craftiest head that ever wagged in Equity. Not that the code is a severe one; it is exactly in its lenity lies its difficulty,--so much may be done, but so little may be fatal! The Countess in the present case enjoyed what in England is reckoned a great privilege,--she was tried by her peers--or “something more.” They were, however, all nice discriminators as to the class of case before them, and they knew well what danger there was in admitting to their “guild” any with a little more disgrace than their neighbors. It was curious enough that she, in whose behalf all this solicitude was excited, should have been less than indifferent as to the result; and when, on the third day of the trial, a verdict was delivered in her favor, and a shower of visiting-cards at the porter's lodge declared that the act of her recognition had passed, her orders were that the cards should be sent back to their owners, as the Countess had not the honor of their acquaintance.