We Have The Same
Madness In Our Brains; We Have Even A Roman Megalomania, But The Effect
Of It In Chicago Or Pittsburg Or Philadelphia Or New York Has Not Yet
Got Beyond A Ducal Or A Princely Son-In-Law.
The splendors of such
alliances have still to take substantial form in a single instance
worthy to compare with a thousand instances in the commercial republics
of Italy.
This does not mean that our rich people have not so much money
as the Italians of the Renaissance, but that perhaps in their _folie des
grandeurs_ they are a different kind of madmen; it means also that land
and labor are dearer positively and comparatively with us, and that our
pork-packing or stock-broking princes prefer to spend on comfort rather
than size in their houses, and do not like the cold feet which the
merchant princes of Italy must have had from generation to generation. I
shall always be sorry I did not wear arctics when I went to the
Pallavicini-Durazzo palace, and I strongly tirge the reader to do so
when he goes.
He will not so much need them out-of-doors in a Genoese January, unless
a _tramontana_ is blowing, and there was none on our half-day. But in
any case we did not walk. We selected the best-looking cab-horse we
could find, and he turned out better than his driver, who asked a
fabulous price by the hour. We obliged him to show his tariff, when his
wickedness was apparent from the printed rates.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 40 of 353
Words from 10659 to 10922
of 97259
