All the amusements of the Papal
subjects are regulated with the strictest regard to their morals. Private
or public gambling of any kind, excepting always the Papal Lottery, is
strictly suppressed. There are no public dancing-places of any kind, no
casinos or "cafes chantants." No public masked balls are allowed, except
one or two on the last nights of the Carnival. The theatres themselves
are kept under the most rigid "surveillance." Every thing, from the
titles of the plays to the petticoats of the ballet-girls, undergoes
clerical inspection. The censorship is as unsparing of "double
entendres" as of political allusions, and "Palais Royal" farces are
'Bowdlerized' down till they emerge from the process innocuous and dull;
compared with one at the "Apollo," a ballet at the Princess's was a wild
and voluptuous orgy.
The same system of repression prevails in everything. In the print-shops
one never sees a picture which even verges on impropriety. The few
female portraits exhibited in their windows are robed with an amount of
drapery which would satisfy the most prudish "sensibilities." All books,
which have the slightest amorous tendency, are scrupulously interdicted
without reference to their political views. The number of wine-shops
seems to me small in proportion to the size of the city, and in none of
them, as far as I could learn, are spirits sold.
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