This is an honour
not uncommonly conferred in Italy, where female learning, perhaps from
its rarity, is highly esteemed; but I am told the ladies thus
distinguished seldom speak in public, though their degree entitles them
to a chair in the University. In the Signorina V.'s society I found the
most advanced reformers of the duchy: among others Signor Gamba, the
famous pamphleteer, author of a remarkable treatise on taxation, which
had nearly cost him his liberty under the late Duke's reign. He is a man
of extreme views and sarcastic tongue, with an irritability of manner
that is perhaps the result of bodily infirmities. His ideas, I am told,
have much weight with the fair doctoress; and in the lampoons of the day
the new constitution is said to be the offspring of their amours, and to
have inherited its father's deformity.
The company presently withdrawing, my hostess pressed me to remain. She
was eager for news from France, spoke admiringly of the new
constitution, and recited in a moving manner an Ode of her own
composition on the Fall of the Bastille. Though living so retired she
makes no secret of her connection with the Duke; said he had told her of
his conversation with me, and asked what I thought of his plan for
draining the marsh of Pontesordo. On my attempting to reply to this in
detail, I saw that, like some of the most accomplished of her sex, she
was impatient of minutiae, and preferred general ideas to particular
instances; but when the talk turned on the rights of the people I was
struck by the energy and justice of her remarks, and by a tone of
resolution and courage that made me to say to myself: "Here is the hand
that rules the state.
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