What had the future in store for those two? Or, worse still, for the survivor of those two? In contrast, I saw a certain humble "home" far away in America, where two old ladies were ending their lives surrounded by loving friends and relations, honored and cherished and guarded tenderly from the rude world.
In big cities like Paris and Rome there is another class of the expatriated, the wealthy who have left their homes in a moment of pique after the failure of some social or political ambition; and who find in these centres the recognition refused them at home and for which their souls thirsted.
It is not to these I refer, although it is curious to see a group of people living for years in a country of which they, half the time, do not speak the language (beyond the necessities of house-keeping and shopping), knowing but few of its inhabitants, and seeing none of the society of the place, their acquaintance rarely going beyond that equivocal, hybrid class that surrounds rich "strangers" and hangs on to the outer edge of the GRAND MONDE.One feels for this latter class merely contempt, but one's pity is reserved for the former.What object lessons some lives on the Continent would be to impatient souls at home, who feel discontented with their surroundings, and anxious to break away and wander abroad! Let them think twice before they cut the thousand ties it has taken a lifetime to form.Better monotony at your own fireside, my friends, where at the worst, you are known and have your place, no matter how small, than an old age among strangers.