The old princess Montevarchi was English by birth and education,
but thirty-three years of life in Rome had almost obliterated all
traces of her nationality. That all-pervading influence, which so
soon makes Romans of foreigners who marry into Roman families, had
done its work effectually. The Roman nobility, by intermarriage
with the principal families of the rest of Europe, has lost many
Italian characteristics; but its members are more essentially
Romans than the full-blooded Italians of the other classes who
dwell side by side with the aristocracy in Rome.

When Lady Gwendoline Fontenoy married Don Lotario Montevarchi in
the year 1834, she, no doubt, believed that her children would
grow up as English as she herself, and that her husband's house
would not differ materially from an establishment of the same kind
in England. She laughed merrily at the provisions of the marriage
contract, which even went so far as to stipulate that she was to
have at least two dishes of meat at dinner, and an equivalent on
fast-days, a drive every day--the traditional trottata--two new
gowns every year, and a woman to wait upon her. After these and
similar provisions had been agreed upon, her dowry, which was a
large one for those days, was handed over to the keeping of her
father-in-law and she was duly married to Don Lotario, who at once
assumed the title of Duca di Bellegra. The wedding journey
consisted of a fortnight's retirement in the Villa Montevarchi at
Frascati, and at the end of that time the young couple were
installed under the paternal roof in Rome. Before she had been in
her new abode a month the young Duchessa realised the utter
hopelessness of attempting to change the existing system of
patriarchal government under which she found herself living. She