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18 it like a golden frame. The men do not interest me much unless they are painted or sculptured, and I leave to you, Maria, all possible enthusiasm for those handsome, supple Italians who have such wild black beards and noble aquiline noses, and such soft, crafty eyes. They say the Lombards are the finest men. I have never investigated them very closely; I have only earnestly studied the Lombard women, and these I declare are really as beautiful as they are famed to be. But they must even in the Middle Ages have been fairly fair. It is said that the beauty of the ladies of Milan was the reason of the secret impulse which sent Francis the First on his Italian campaign. The knightly king was doubtless desirous of knowing whether his spiritual little cousins, the kinsfolk of his godmothers, were as beautiful as he had heard boasted. Poor rogue! he paid dearly at Pavia for his curiosity.

"But the full beauty of these Italian women is first seen when their faces are lighted up by music. I say lighted up, because the effect of music, as I have seen it in the opera, on the faces