In place, however, of the cicisbeo or cavaliere servente, whose services and attentions were a form of society, it is, we fear, undeniable that more intimate though less avowed relations exist between many Italian ladies and other men than their husbands. That there are numerous and admirable exceptions to the rule, if it be a rule, we freely admit; but, unless the concurrent testimony of all writers and travelers in Italy be absolutely false, and either basely slanderous or culpably careless, the marriage vow can only be regarded as a cloak for a license that is inadmissible to the unmarried woman. The testimony of a profligate man is rarely to be taken against women; and though the witness be a lord and a poet, we do not know that this should make a difference were the case one of mere abuse. Coupled, however, as the inculpation is with extenuatory remarks, we think Lord Byron's observations valuable. In a letter to Mr. Murray, the celebrated London publisher (February 21, 1820), he says: "You ask me for a volume of manners in Italy. Perhaps I am in the case to know more of them than most Englishmen. * * * * * I have lived in their houses, and in the heart of their families, sometimes merely as _Amico di Casa_, and sometimes as _Amico di Cuore_ of the _Dama_, and in neither case do I feel justified in making a book of them. Their moral is not your moral; their life is not your life; you would not understand it; it is not English, nor French, nor German, which you would all understand. * * * * * I know not how to make you comprehend a people who are at once temperate and profligate, serious in their characters and buffoons in their amusements, capable of impressions and passions which are at once sudden and durable. * * * * * I should know something of the matter, having had a pretty general experience among their women, from the fisherman's wife up to the _Nobil Dama_ whom I serve. * * * * * They are extremely tenacious, and jealous as furies, not permitting their lovers even to marry if they can help it, and keeping them always to them in public as in private. * * * * * The reason is, that they marry for their parents and love for themselves. They exact fidelity from a lover as a debt of honor, while they pay the husband as a tradesman. You hear a person's character, male or female, canvassed, not as depending on their conduct to their husbands or wives, but to their mistress or lover. If I wrote a quarto I don't know that I could do more than amplify what I have here noted. It is to be observed, that while they do all this, the greatest outward respect is to be paid to the husbands, not only by the ladies, but by their _serventi_, particularly if the husband serve no one himself (which is not often the case, however), so that you would often suppose them relations, the _servente_ making the figure of one adopted in the family.