Page:Lady Anne Granard 2.pdf/241

Rh Riccardini says" She hesitated, and Lady Anne, in an impatient tone, cried out— "What does he say? Why do you act so like a fool, speaking very often when you should hold your tongue, and stopping when you should speak!" "He says no person should ever incur debt for his own personal pleasure or celebrity; that it is a disgrace and an act of dishonesty, which places the highest nobleman (in a just and moral point of view) below the poorest artizan, who works for his bread and pays for his bread. There may be cases, he allows, where a man desires to effect a grand national purpose, in which he may incur risk, because the many must not be sacrificed for the few, and" "There, there, be silent; I have had quite nonsense enough in one morning for my weak state. Come, and rub my right foot. It is shocking that the Count should talk so like an ass about the few and the many; but Italian people are dreadfully ignorant; their church keeps them so—I have heard him say so himself. Still he cannot but know that in every country the nobility are the few, the canaille the many, who work, dig, delve for them, and ought, as poor Lady Sarah Butterlip says, to be only too happy when they have it in their power either to lend them or give them any thing they will condescend to accept. It is on that principle I have been always so kind to the Palmers; every day of my life I wish I were at home