In order not to laugh in the face of these fine patriots one must remember that, owing to the dissensions of the Middle Age, envenomed by the vile policy of the Popes,[4] each city has a mortal hatred for its neighbour, and the name of the inhabitants in the one always stands in the other as a synonym for some gross fault. The Popes have succeeded in making this beautiful land into the kingdom of hate.
This patriotism of the antechamber is the greatest moral sore in Italy, a corrupting germ that will still show its disastrous effects long after Italy has thrown off the yoke of its ridiculous little priests.[5] The form of this patriotism is an inexorable hatred for everything foreign. Thus they look on the Germans as fools, and get angry when someone says: "What has Italy in the eighteenth century produced the equal of Catherine II or Frederick the Great? Where have you an English garden comparable to the smallest German garden, you who, with your climate, have a real need of shade?"
7. Unlike the English or French, the Italians have no political prejudices; they all know by heart the line of La Fontaine:—
Notre ennemi c'est notre M.[6]
Aristocracy, supported by the priest and a biblical state of society, is a worn-out illusion which only makes them smile. In return, an Italian needs a stay of three months in France to realise that a draper may be a conservative.
8. As a last trait of character I would mention intolerance in discussion, and anger as soon as they do not find an argument ready to hand, to throw out against that of their adversary. At that point they visibly turn pale. It is one form of their extreme sensibility, but it is not one of its most amiable forms: consequently it is one of those that I am most willing to admit as proof of the existence of sensibility.
I wanted to see love without end, and, after considerable difficulty, I succeeded in being introduced this evening to Chevalier C—— and his mistress, with whom he has lived for fifty-four years. I left the box of these charming old people, my heart melted; there I saw the art of being happy, an art ignored by so many young people.
Two months ago I saw Monsignor R——, by whom I was well received, because I brought him some copies of the Minerve. He was at his country house with Madame D——, whom he is still pleased, after thirty-four years, "avvicinare," as they say. She is still beautiful, but there is a touch of melancholy in this household. People attribute it to the loss of a son, who was poisoned long ago by her husband.
Here, to be in love does not mean, as at Paris, to see one's mistress for a quarter of an hour every week, and for the rest of the time to obtain a look or a shake of the hand: the lover, the happy lover, passes four or five hours every day with the woman he loves. He talks to her about his actions at law, his English garden, his hunting parties, his prospects, etc. There is the completest, the most tender intimacy. He speaks to her with the familiar "tu," even in the presence of her husband and everywhere.
A young man of this country, one very ambitious as he believed, was called to a high position at Vienna (nothing less than ambassador). But he could not get used to his stay abroad. At the end of six months he said good-bye to his job, and returned to be happy in his mistress's box at the opera.