It would have been much easier to submit if she had been betrothed to a foreigner, a Roman, or a Florentine.

She had been told that Romans were all wicked and gloomy, and that Florentines were all wicked and gay.

That was what Nella had heard.

But in a sense they were free, for they probably did what was good in their own eyes, as wicked people often do.

Life in Venice was to be lived by rule, and everything that tasted of freedom was repressed by law.