Year: 1875

Except in the maritime republics, the
army, idle and unwarlike as it was in
most cases, continued to be one of the
three careers open to the younger sons OF
good family; the civil service and the
church were the other two. In Genoa,
mobiles had engaged in commerce with
equal honor and profit; nearly every
argosy that sailed to or from the port Of
Venice belonged to some lordly specula.
tor but in Milan noble who descended
to trade lost his nobility, by a law not
abrogated till the time Of Charles w..
The mobiles had therefore nothing to do


They could not 90 into business if they
entered the army it was not to fight; the
civil service was of course actually per-
formed by subordinates there were not
cures for half he priests, and there grew
up that odd, polite rabble of abbati,
priests without cures, sometimes attached
to noble families as chaplains, sometimes
devoting themselves to literature or
science, sometimes leading lives Of mere
leisure and fashion; they were mostly Of
plebeian origin when they did anything
at all besides paying court to the ladies,


In Milan the mobiles were exempt from
many taxes paid by the plebeians; they
had separate courts Of law, with judges Of
their own order, before whom q plebeian
plaintiff appeared with what hope Of
justice may be imagined. Yet they were
not oppressive they were at worst only
insolent to their interiors, and they com.
monty used them with the gentleness
which an Italian can hardly fail in. There
were many ties of kindness between the
classes. the memory of favors and services
between master and servant, landlord and
tenant, in relations which then lasted a
lifetime, and even for generations. In
Venice, where it was one of the high priv
ileges Of the patrician to spit from his
box at the theatre upon the heads of the
people in the pit, the familiar bond of
patron and client SO endeared the old
republican mobiles to the populace that
the Venetian poor of this day, who know
them only by tradition, still lament them.
But, on the whole, men have found it, at
Venice, as elsewhere, better not to be
spit upon, even by an affectionate nobility.


The patricians were luxurious every.
where. In Rome they built splendid
palaces, in Milan they gave gorgeous din
ners. Goldoni, in his charming memoirs,
tells us that the Milanese of his time
never met anywhere without talking Of
eating, and they did eat upon all possible
occasions. public. domestic, and religious
throughout Italy they have yet the nick
name of lupi lomJardi lombard wolves)
which their good appetites won them.
The mobiles Of that gay old Milan were
very hospitable, easy Of access, and full Of
invitations for the stranger; French
writer found their cooking delicate and
estimable as that of his own nation; but
he adds that many of these friendly, well.
dining aristocrats had not good ton. One
can think of them at our distance of time
and place with kindness which Italian
critics, especially those Of the bitter
period of struggle about the middle Of
this century do not effect Emiliani.
Giudici, for example, does not, when he
calls them and their order throughout
Italy an aristocratic leprosy. He assures
US that at the time Of that long peace,
"the moral degradation Of what the
French call the great world was the in.
veterate habit of centuries; the mobiles
wallowed in their filth untouched by re-
morse the eye of decent man, behold.
ing the ridiculous and immoral scenes of
their daily life, must turn away in hor.
ror; y and he presently speaks Of them as
"gilded swine, vain of the glories of their
blazons, which they dragged through the
mre of their vices"