Hence the
word came to be applied punningly to the bow depending from a
clouded cane or ornamental crook.
In sixteenth-century Spain,
home of the sedan and the caballero galante, the original term
was bracciere. In Venice the form was cavaliere servente. For a
good note on the subject, see Sismondi's Italian Republics, ed.
William Boulting, 1907, p. 793.] Like so much in the shapes and
customs of Italy the cicisbeatura was in its origin partly Gothic
and partly Oriental. It combined the chivalry of northern
friendship with the refined passion of the South for the
seclusion of women. As an experiment in protest against the
insipidity which is too often an accompaniment of conjugal
intercourse the institution might well seem to deserve a more
tolerant and impartial investigation than it has yet received at
the hands of our sociologists. A survival so picturesque could
hardly be expected to outlive the bracing air of the nineteenth
century. The north wind blew and by 1840 the cicisbeatura was a
thing of the past.
Freed from the necessity of a systematic delineation Smollett
rambles about Nice, its length and breadth, with a stone in his
pouch, and wherever a cockshy is available he takes full
advantage of it. He describes the ghetto (p. 171), the police
arrangements of the place which he finds in the main highly
efficient, and the cruel punishment of the strappado. The
garrucha or strappado and the garrotes, combined with the water-torture
and the rack, represented the survival of the fittest in
the natural selection of torments concerning which the Holy
Office in Italy and Spain had such a vast experience.
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