In old-fashioned houses there are often several
of them, headed invariably by the "giornale ambulante," the
walking newspaper, whose business it is to pick up items of news
during the day in order to detail them to the family in the
evening. There is a certain old princess who sits every evening
with her needlework at the head of a long table in the dismal
drawing-room of a gigantic palace. On each side of the board are
seated the old parasites, the family doctor, the family chaplain,
the family lawyer, the family librarian, the peripatetic news-
sheet and the rest.
"I have been out to-day," says her excellency.
"Oh! Ah! Dear me! In this weather! Hear what the princess says!
The princess has been out!" The chorus comes up the table, all the
answers reaching her ears at once.
"And I saw, as I drove by, the new monument! What a ridiculous
thing it is."
"Ho! ho! ho! Hah! hah! hah! Dear me! What a monument! What fine
taste the princess has! Hear what the princess thinks of the
monument!"
"If you will believe it, the bronze horse has a crooked leg." "He!
he! he! Hi! hi! hi! Dear me! A crooked leg! How the princess
understands horses! The princess saw that he had a crooked leg!"
And so on, for a couple of hours, in the cold, dimly-lighted room
until her excellency has had enough of it and rises to go to bed,
when the parasites all scuttle away and quarrel with each other in
the street as they walk home.
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