The summer is the season for what society there is, but even then there is but little.

There are no saloons in the Roman theatres, and the miserable refreshment-rooms, with their bars even more shabby and worse provided than our English ones, are, as you may suppose, not places of meeting.

Even at the Opera there seemed to be little visiting in the boxes.

With the exception of the strangers' rooms, there are no reading- rooms or clubs in Rome, if I may exclude from this category a miserable _Gabinetto di Lettura_, chiefly frequented by priests, and whose current _lettura_ consisted of the _Tablet_, the _Univers_, the _Armonia_, and the _Courier des Alpes_.

The only real places of meeting, or focuses of news, are the cafes.