"
"You like my city, Signora?"
"I love it. Ah! how much have you here to enoble, to refine, to
educate; what great souls have expanded in an atmosphere laden with
the breath of a long, never-dying line of poets, orators, sculptors
and painters. Yes, Signor Castenelli, it is a noble heritage to be
Roman-born."
"Thanks, Signora Vernon, for your gracious tribute to my country. But
alas, we are fast becoming inoculated with the progressive spirit of
the age; the American is among us."
"You should extol him, Signor Castenelli, it is the fashion with us to
welcome him, his note-book and his gold."
"He is too energetic for me," said the Italian, as Vaura taking his
arm followed others to the salons and from the feast.
"He is a man of his time; you and I, Signor, are old-fashioned in
regretting that many of the old land-marks are doomed; the spirit of
the age is insatiable and his votaries are never idle in sacrificing
in his honour, and if we'd be happy we must not weep. I confess I
regret that your historic, not over clean, but picturesque Jews
quarter, the Ghetto, is to give place to your new palace of justice;
it is rather an incongruity (to me) that it should rise as if from the
ashes of hearth-stones round which in days of yore figures sat to whom
justice had been very imperfectly meted out.
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