It is said that an amalgamation
is being brought about, but it is slow work; a generation will have
to die out before much real mingling of the two courts will take
place. As both these circles are poor, very little entertainment
goes on. One sees a little life in the diplomatic world, and the
King and Queen give a ball or two during the winter, but since the
repeated defeats of the Italian arms in Africa, and the heavy
financial difficulties (things these sovereigns take very seriously
to heart), there has not been much "go" in the court
entertainments.
The young set hope great things of the new Princess of Naples, the
bride of the heir-apparent, a lady who is credited with being full
of fun and life; it is fondly imagined that she will set the ball
rolling again. By the bye, her first lady-in-waiting, the young
Duchess del Monte of Naples, was an American girl, and a very
pretty one, too. She enjoyed for some time the enviable
distinction of being the youngest and handsomest duchess in Europe,
until Miss Vanderbilt married Marlborough and took the record from
her. The Prince and Princess of Naples live at their Neapolitan
capital, and will not do much to help things in Rome. Besides
which he is very delicate and passes for not being any too fond of
the world.
What makes things worse is that the great nobles are mostly "land
poor," and even the richer ones burned their fingers in the craze
for speculation that turned all Rome upside down in the years
following 1870 and Italian unity, when they naively imagined their
new capital was to become again after seventeen centuries the
metropolis of the world.
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