And what I chiefly remember of His Eminence was his evident annoyance at the ultra-demonstrative zeal of the female portion of the mixed Catholic and Protestant assembly, who _would_ kneel and kiss his hand.

A schoolmaster meeting boys in society, who, instantly on his appearance should begin unbuttoning their brace buttons behind, would hardly appreciate the recognition more gratefully.
Within a very few weeks of our establishment in Casa Berti my mother's home became, as usual, a centre of attraction and pleasant intercourse, and her weekly Friday receptions were always crowded.

If I were to tell everything of what I remember in connection with those days, I should produce such a book as _non di, non homines, non concessere columnae_--a book such as neither publishers, nor readers, nor the _columns_ of the critical journals would tolerate, and should fill my pages with names, which, however interesting they may still be for me, would hardly have any interest for the public, however gentle or pensive.
One specialty, and that not a pleasant one, of a life so protracted as mine has been in the midst of such a society as that of Florence in those days, is the enormous quantity of the names which turn the tablets of memory into palimpsests, not twice, but fifty times written over!--unpleasant, not from the thronging _in_ of the motley company, but from the inevitable passing _out_ of them from the field of vision.

One's recollections come to resemble those of the spectator of a phantasmagoric show.

Processions of heterogeneous figures, almost all of them connected in some way or other with more or less pleasant memories, troop across the magic circle of light, only, alack! to vanish into uttermost night when they pass beyond its limit.