But there is, or was, for I speak of years ago, a considerable conservative pride in their own inherited customs and traditions common to all classes.
Especially this is perceived in the speech of the genuine Florentine.
Quaint proverbs, not always of scrupulous refinement, old-world phrases, local allusions, are stuffed into the conversation of your real citizen or citizeness of _Firenze la Gentile_ as thickly as the beads in the _vezzo di corallo_ on the neck of a _contadina_.

And above all, the accent--the soft (not to say slobbering) _c_ and _g_, and the guttural aspirate which turns _casa_ into _hasa_ and _capitale_ into _hapitale_, and so forth--this is cherished with peculiar fondness.

I have heard a young, elegant, and accomplished woman discourse in very choice Italian with the accent of a market-woman, and on being remonstrated with for the use of some very pungent proverbial illustration in her talk, she replied with conviction, "That is the right way to speak Tuscan.

I have nothing to do with what Italians from other provinces may prefer.

But pure, racy Tuscan--the Tuscan tongue that we have inherited--is spoken as I speak it--or ought to be!" I had gathered together, partly for my own pleasure, and partly in the course of historical researches, a valuable collection of works on _Storia Patria_, which were sold by me when I gave up my house there.
The reading of Italian, even very crabbed and ancient Italian which might have puzzled more than one "elegant scholar," became quite easy and familiar to me, but I have never attained a colloquial mastery over the language.