Page:In a winter city, by Ouida.djvu/123

 it had a pot pourri of nationalties, it had some of the most agreeable persons of every nation; if trying to be very naughty it generally only became very dull—that was the doom of modern society everywhere.

There were charming houses in it, where there were real wit, real music, and real welcome. If people saw each other too often, strong friendships could come out of such frequency as well as animosities; and there was a great charm in the familiar, easy, pleasant intimacies which so naturally grew out of the artistic idling under these sombre and noble walls, and in the palaces where all the arts once reigned.

She had begun to take the fair city into her heart, as everyone who has a heart must needs do, having once dwelt within the olive girdle of its pure pale hills, and seen its green waters wash the banks erst peopled with the gorgeous splendours of the Renaissance.

She even began to like her daily life in it; the mornings dreamed away before some favourite Giorgione or Veronese, or spent in dim old shops full of the oddest mingling of rubbish and of