It is by
rare chance that a young girl makes acquaintance with young men in
society; she seldom talks with them at the parties to which she is
sometimes taken by her mother, and they do not call upon her at her home;
while for her to walk alone with a young man would be vastly more
scandalous than much worse things, and is, consequently, unheard of. The
Italians say freely they cannot trust their women as northern women are
trusted; and some Italian women frankly confess that their sex would be
worse if it were trusted more. But the truth does not appear in this
shallow suspicion and this shallow self-conviction; and one who cares to
have a just estimate of this matter must by no means believe all the evil
he hears. There may be much corruption in society, but there is infinitely
more wrong in the habits of idle gossip and guilty scandal, which eat all
sense of shame and pity out of the heart of Venice. There is no parallel
to the prying, tattling, backbiting littleness of the place elsewhere in
the world.
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