It taught me how
independent individual worth is of the nature of one's convictions.
Most of the Italians I had so far been acquainted with were simple
people, my landlord and his family, and those who visited them, and I
sometimes heard fragments of conversation which revealed the common
people's mode of thought to me. In one house that I visited, the
mistress discovered that her maid was not married to her so-called
husband, a matter in which, for that matter, she was very blameless,
since her parents had refused their consent, and she had afterwards
allowed herself to be abducted. Her mistress reproached her for the
illegal relations existing. She replied, "If God wishes to plunge anyone
into misery, that person is excused."--"We must not put the blame of
everything upon God," said the mistress.--"Yes, yes," replied the girl
unabashed; "then if the Devil wishes to plunge a person into misery, the
person is excused."--"Nor may we put the blame of our wrongdoing on the
Devil," said the mistress.--"Good gracious," said the girl, "it must be
the fault of one or other of them, everybody knows that. If it is not
the one, it is the other."
At the house of the Blanchettis, who had come to Rome, I met many Turin
and Roman gentlemen. They were all very much taken up by an old Sicilian
chemist of the name of Muratori, who claimed that he had discovered a
material which looked like linen, but was impervious to bullets, sword-
cuts, bayonet-thrusts, etc.
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