They were for the day: in the evening, he tells Moore, "I do one of many nothings--either at the theatres, or some of the conversaziones, which are like our routs, or rather worse, for the women sit in a semi-circle by the lady of the mansion, and the men stand about the room.

To be sure, there is one improvement upon ours--instead of lemonade with their ices, they hand about stiff _rum-punch_--_punch_, by my palate; and this they think _English_.

I would not disabuse them of so agreeable an error,--'no, not for "Venice"'." The chief houses to which he went were the Palazzo Benzon and the Palazzo Albrizzi.

Moore when in Venice a little later also paid his respects to the Countess Albrizzi.

"These assemblies," he wrote home, "which, at a distance, sounded so full of splendour and gallantry to me, turned into something much worse than one of Lydia White's conversaziones." Here is one of Byron's rattling descriptions of a Venetian night.