For they are all equal from the hour when the Holy Father has signed their parchments. Whatever be the origin of their nobility and the antiquity of their houses, they go arm in arm, without any disputes as to precedence. The names of Orsini, Colonna, and Sforza, are jumbled together in the family of a former domestique de place. The son of a baker marries the daughter of a Lante de La Rovère, granddaughter of a Prince Colonna, and a Princess of Savoie-Carignan. There is no fear that the famous quarrel of the princes and dukes, which so roused the indignation of our stately St. Simon, will ever be repeated among the Roman aristocracy.
To what purpose should it be, gracious Heavens! Don't they well know—dukes and princes—that they are all alike inferior to the shabbiest of the cardinals? The day that a Capuchin receives the red hat, he acquires the right to splash the mud in their faces as he rides past in his gilded coach.
In all monarchical States, the king is the natural head of the nobility. The strongest term that a gentleman can make use of, in alluding to his house, is that it is as noble as the King. As noble as the Pope would be simply ludicrous, since a swineherd, the son of a swineherd, may be elected Pope, and receive the oath of fidelity from all the Roman princes. They may well then consider themselves upon an equality among themselves, these poor grandees, seeing that they are equally looked down upon by a few priests.
They console themselves with the thought that they are superior to all the laymen in the world. This soothing vanity, neither noisy nor insolent, but none the less firmly rooted in their hearts, enables them to swallow the daily affront of conscious inferiority.
I am quite aware of the points in which they are inferior to the upstarts of the Church, but their affected superiority to other men is less evident to me.
As to their courage. Some years have elapsed since they had the opportunity of proving it on the field of battle.[4]
Heaven forbids duelling. The Government inculcates the gentler virtues.
They are not wanting in a certain ostentatious and theatrical liberality. A Piombino sent his ambassador to the conference at Vienna, allowing £4,000 for the expenses of the mission. A Borghese gave the mob of Rome a banquet that cost £48,000, to celebrate the return of Pius VII. Almost all the Roman princes open their palaces, villas, and galleries to the public. To be sure, old Sciarra used to sell permission to copy his pictures, but he was a notorious miser, and has found no imitators.
They practise generally the virtue of charity, in a somewhat indiscriminate manner, from the love of patronage, from pride, habit, and weakness, because they are ashamed to refuse. They are by no means badly disposed, they are good—I stop at this word, lest I should go too far.
They are not wanting in sense or intelligence. Prince Massimo is quoted for his good sense, and the two Caetani for their puns. Santa-Croce, though a little cracked, is no ordinary man. But what a wretched education the Government gives them! When they are not the children, they are the pupils of priests, whose system principally consists in teaching them nothing. Get hold of a student of St. Sulpice, wash him tolerably clean, have him dressed by Alfred or Poole, and bejewelled by Castellani or Hunt and Roskel, let him learn to thrum a guitar, and sit upon a horse, and you'll have a Roman prince as good as the best of them.