1858]	FOREIGN LIFE	493
as by an aerial staircase, till, far above all human things, she flung her snow-white tresses into the azure sky!
"Then the Fanti of the coloured robes bowed their heads and trembled, and acknowledged in penitence and humility — 'Truly the Fante of the white rocks is the most beautiful thing in the world!'
" Who can go to Carrara, my auntie, and not feel this ? "
We were for a few days at Turin. The society there was then, as it is still, the very climax of stagnation. One of its most admired ornaments was a beautiful young Contessa la Marmora. She did nothing all day, absolxitely nothing, but sit looking pretty, with her chin leaning on her hand. Her mother-in-law was rather more energetic than herself, and hoping to rouse her., left a new "Journal des Modes" upon her table. Some days after, she asked what she thought of it. " Alas! " said the young Countess, with her beautiful head still leaning upon her hand, "I have been so much occupied, that I never have found time to look into it." In all my acquaintance since with Italian ladies, I have always found the same, that they are all intensely occupied, but that it is in doing — nothing!
Since the dreadful epidemic at court, which swept away at once the Queen, the Queen-Dowager, and the Duke of Genoa, the King had never received, and as his eldest daughter, Madame Clotilde, was not old enough to do so, there were no court parties. At the opera all .the young ladies sat facing the stage_3 and the old ladies away from it; but when the ballet began there was a general change; the old ladies moved to the front, and the young ones went behind.