"You like my city, Signora?"
"I love it. Ah! how much have you here to enoble, to refine, to educate; what great souls have expanded in an atmosphere laden with the breath of a long, never-dying line of poets, orators, sculptors and painters. Yes, Signor Castenelli, it is a noble heritage to be Roman-born."
"Thanks, Signora Vernon, for your gracious tribute to my country. But alas, we are fast becoming inoculated with the progressive spirit of the age; the American is among us."
"You should extol him, Signor Castenelli, it is the fashion with us to welcome him, his note-book and his gold."
"He is too energetic for me," said the Italian, as Vaura taking his arm followed others to the salons and from the feast.
"He is a man of his time; you and I, Signor, are old-fashioned in regretting that many of the old land-marks are doomed; the spirit of the age is insatiable and his votaries are never idle in sacrificing in his honour, and if we'd be happy we must not weep. I confess I regret that your historic, not over clean, but picturesque Jews quarter, the Ghetto, is to give place to your new palace of justice; it is rather an incongruity (to me) that it should rise as if from the ashes of hearth-stones round which in days of yore figures sat to whom justice had been very imperfectly meted out."
"True, true, Signora Vernon, and I don't like to see them all go, and your sympathy is sweet. The American is a giant in his time; but we are not as they, he is literally a man of to-day; he has to be always in a hurry to make his name tell. We have done all that, but he is wrong to say we are dreamers," and his eyes flashed; "our blood is as full of fire as in the days of the Gracchi, the Caesars."
"Theirs was a grand age, but ours is gay, and could we be promoted backwards, I fear me," she added gaily, "we would long for our telephone, our electric light, our novels, our mutual club life, our great Worth, our lounging chairs, and many other pet luxuries."
"True, Signora," answered Castenelli, in the same tone, "and I can answer for myself; were a belle of those days to step from the canvas for my approval, I should tell her to sleep on, and give place to her more beautiful and gay sister of my own day."
"In the name of the butterflies of to-day, I thank you," said Vaura gaily.