But this was of all battles the most arduous, because the dividing line between coquetry and a woman’s duty to be pleasant was not always very clearly marked. A few exceptional persons had the gift of admirably combining the two tendencies; these as a rule were Italian women. At a celebrated ball given by the court of France in 1518, two ladies, Italian both, were queens—queens of beauty and of charm; the one, Clara Visconti Pusterla, devoted to white, made a brilliant figure with her silver embroideries and ropes of pearls; the other, a sister of Count Borromeo of Milan, was a dazzling apparition in cloth of gold and diamonds. Yet it was felt how secondary and precarious were successes of this external kind, and how wrong it would be for women to regard them as the real basis of their influence. They were only one means. The fashion in regard to dwelling-house and furniture followed almost the same rules as that of costume; for in a well-ordered house everything harmonised with the people inhabiting it. The house is, so to speak, a magnificent garment, the garment defending our existence against the weather, the night, the intrusions of external life. Here, too, symmetry of arrangement and studied designs are of little moment: the house should exercise a charm, and there are ugly houses which are infinitely pleasing. A house is pleasing when its appearance is original and homogeneous; when its inhabitant has lovingly put into it something of his own individuality, when it is not merely a classical and regular arrangement of stones erected on some vacant spot, or a gimcrack toy with pretentious and purposeless decorations; it pleases if serious thought has gone to the arrangement of its parts, if it has projections, angles, recesses judiciously contrived, and making it, so to speak, a living, breathing thing. This is the first rule: a masculine purposefulness. The second and the feminine rule is that the house should present a great aspect of pleasantness, an appearance of amiability. It is of vast importance that it should not clash with the landscape; it should fuse with it, espouse in some sort circumambient nature, so as to radiate an influence far beyond its actual site. This harmony results as a rule from mutual accommodations; a gloomy house, for instance, will not be planted in a smiling landscape; in a wooded or rugged but spacious locality a man will set an extensive abode, without fantastic decorations, a house which dominates outbuildings and approaches; no gildings, no polychrome effects will be thrown up against a leaden sky: a church will not be constructed in the style of a hammam, nor a stock-exchange in the form of a Greek temple. The house, whatever it be, must smile, with a frank and loyal smile, speaking through its façade and its approaches to the good folk who pass, and beaming on them a look of friendliness.