I was much pleased with the husband's mother, who was advanced in years but extremely intelligent. She had evidently made a point of forgetting everything unpleasant in the past history of her son's wife. Nina was wonderfully beautiful; but as it has always been my opinion that mere beauty does not go for much, I could not understand how a viceroy could have fallen in love with her to such an extent. If these Memoirs, only written to console me in the dreadful weariness which is slowly killing me in Bohemia--and which, perhaps, would kill me anywhere, since, though my body is old, my spirit and my desires are as young as ever--if these Memoirs are ever read, I repeat, they will only be read when I am gone, and all censure will be lost on me. Is selfishness, then, the universal motor of our actions? I am afraid it is. Time that destroys marble and brass destroys also the very memory of what has been. ROME [JC#28][jcrom10.xxx]2978 Emotion is infectious. Betty wept, Sir B---- M---- wept, and I wept to keep them company. At last nature called at truce, and by degrees our sobs and tears ceased and we became calmer. I have travelled all over Europe, but France is the only country in which I saw a decent and respectable clergy. FLORENCE TO TRIESTE [JC#29][jcflt10.xxx]2979 I cannot help laughing when people ask me for advice, as I feel so certain that my advice will not be taken. Man is an animal that has to learn his lesson by hard experience in battling with the storms of life. Thus the world is always in disorder and always ignorant, for those who know are always in an infinitesimal proportion to the whole. He denied, for instance, that almsgiving could annul the penalty attached to sin, and according to him the only sort of almsgiving which had any merit was that prescribed in the Gospel: "Let not thy right hand know what thy left hand doeth." He even maintained that he who gave alms sinned unless it was done with the greatest secrecy, for alms given in public are sure to be accompanied by vanity. She asked where he was, and I said at Venice; but of course she did not believe me. There are circumstances when a clever man deceives by telling the truth, and such a lie as this must be approved by the most rigorous moralists. I also met at Gorice a Count Coronini, who was known in learned circles as the author of some Latin treatises on diplomacy. Nobody read his books, but everybody agreed that he was a very learned man. Fifty years ago a wise man said to me: "Every family is troubled by some small tragedy, which should be kept private with the greatest care. In fine, people should learn to wash their dirty linen in private." OLD AGE AND DEATH [JC#30][jcagdxxx.xxx]2980 Age, that cruel and unavoidable disease, compels me to be in good health, in spite of myself. Now that I am getting into my dotage, I look on the dark side of everything. I am invited to a wedding and see naught but gloom.