‘Who is Giovanelli?’
‘The little Italian. I have asked questions about him and learned something. He is apparently a perfectly respectable little man. I believe in a small way he is in a small way a cavaliere avvocato but he doesn’t move in what are called the first circles. If she thinks him the finest gentleman in the world, he, on his side, has never found himself in personal contact with such splendour, such opulence, such expensiveness, as this young lady’s. And then she must seem to him wonderfully pretty and interesting. I rather doubt whether he dreams of marrying her. That must appear to him to be an impossible piece of luck. He has nothing, but his handsome face to offer, and there is a substantial Mr. Miller in that mysterious land of dollars. Giovanelli knows that he hasn’t a title to offer. If he were only a count or marchese. He must wonder at his luck at the way they have taken him up’.
Henry James, “Daisy Miller”, 1878.
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