Note 36 — Chapter IX

The adoption of the words “Sir Baron, Sir Count,” at the beginning of letters, may appear to the reader quaint and ridiculous; but these expressions are only verbal translations of “Monsieur le Baron,” “Monsieur le Comte,” and less abrupt than plain “Baron,” “Count.” Abroad, the prefix “Dear” is not so lightly attached to a name as it is in England. I recollect, some years ago, an Italian gentleman, Signor Guiseppe Celi, proprietor of a marine villa on the Island of Palmaria, in the Gulf of Spezzia, to have shown me a letter he had received from an English gentleman, who had tenanted his house for some months, and between whom and himself, as it appeared, there existed a tolerable degree of intimacy, and his asking me what I thought of Mr. B.’s addressing him Caro Signore. The wary Italian seemed to imagine it was a term of friendship, to which he was not entitled, and fancied he was about to be wheedled out of something; he could not imagine it proceeded from the writer’s good nature.