Page:A History of the Knights of Malta, or the Order of St. John of Jerusalem.djvu/592

558 found a ready and welcome admission. Even here, however, there were distinctions drawn between the various langue, some of which were far more popular than others. The French members did not find much favour with the ladies who swayed the empire of fashion within this coterie. They were too arrogant, self-sufficient, and boastful ever to be received as chosen favourites, or to find a ready welcome into the domestic privacy of the Maltese. More than one case had occurred in which this braggart tendency on the part of Frenchmen, ever ready to suppose their attractions irresistible, had led to unpleasant results, and had clouded the fair fame of lathes whose only fault had, perchance, consisted in permitting rather too free an offering of adulation on the part of their knightly admirers. Whilst the French were thus neglected, there were other langues the members of which were more fortunate. The Germans, in particular, seem to have borne the palm of popularity. Their natural reserve and phlegmatic temperament prevented them from falling into the errors of their more vivacious confreres, and they were generally admitted to a footing of intimacy and freedom which the latter were never permitted to attain. The Spaniards were also great favourites, for much the same reason, and unless the tales recorded on this point are false, they were most successful in their intercourse with the dames of the island.

With the lower class the rule of the knights was very popular. The works of fortification on which they were always engaged for the strengthening of their position yielded a continuous source of employment to the labouring population, whilst the ample stores of food retained in the magazines of Valetta and Vittoriosa secured them from the miseries of famine which in olden times had so frequently been the scourge of the island. The Grand-Master also sought to ingratiate himself by constantly providing them with amusements. Their privileges in this respect were very numerous, and always maintained with the utmost regularity. Indeed, even at the present time, nearly a century after the departure of the Order, distinct traces remain of this fact in the numerous festas which on every conceivable occasion are held in all the towns and casals. The expenditure for these festas, principally caused by the