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Title: The Heart of Rome

Author: Francis Marion Crawford

Release Date: June, 2004  [EBook #5847]
[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on October 23, 2002]

Edition: 10

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE HEART OF ROME ***




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THE HEART OF ROME

A Tale of the "Lost water"

BY FRANCIS MARION CRAWFORD
Author of "Cecilia," "Saracinesca," "In the Palace of the King," Etc.





THE HEART OF ROME






CHAPTER I




The Baroness Volterra drove to the Palazzo Conti in the heart of Rome
at nine o'clock in the morning, to be sure of finding Donna Clementina
at home. She had tried twice to telephone, on the previous afternoon,
but the central office had answered that "the communication was
interrupted." She was very anxious to see Clementina at once, in order
to get her support for a new and complicated charity. She only wanted
the name, and expected nothing else, for the Conti had very little
ready money, though they still lived as if they were rich. This did
not matter to their friends, but was a source of constant anxiety to
their creditors, and to the good Pompeo Sassi, the steward of the
ruined estate. He alone knew what the Conti owed, for none of them
knew much about it themselves, though he had done his best to make the
state of things clear to them.

The big porter of the palace was sweeping the pavement of the great
entrance, as the cab drove in. He wore his working clothes of grey
linen with silver buttons bearing the ancient arms of his masters, and
his third best gold-laced cap. There was nothing surprising in this,
at such an early hour, and as he was a grave man with a long grey
beard that made him look very important, the lady who drove up in the
open cab did not notice that he was even more solemn than usual. When
she appeared, he gave one more glance at the spot he had been
sweeping, and then grounded his broom like a musket, folded his hands
on the end of the broomstick and looked at her as if he wondered what
on earth had brought her to the palace at that moment, and wished that
she would take herself off again as soon as possible.

He did not even lift his cap to her, yet there was nothing rude in his
manner. He behaved like a man upon whom some one intrudes when he is
in great trouble.

The Baroness was rather more exigent in requiring respect from
servants than most princesses of the Holy Roman Empire, for her
position in the aristocratic scale was not very well defined.

She was not pleased, and spoke with excessive coldness when she asked
if Donna Clementina was at home. The porter stood motionless beside
the cab, leaning on his broom. After a pause he said in a rather
strange voice that Donna Clementina was certainly in, but that he
could not tell whether she were awake or not.

"Please find out," answered the Baroness, with impatience. "I am
waiting," she added with an indescribable accent of annoyance and
surprise, as if she had never been kept waiting before, in all the
fifty years of her more or less fashionable life.

There were speaking-tubes in the porter's lodge, communicating with
each floor of the great Conti palace, but the porter did not move.

"I cannot go upstairs and leave the door," he said.

"You can speak to the servant through the tube, I suppose!"

The porter slowly shook his massive head, and his long grey beard
wagged from side to side.

"There are no servants upstairs," he said. "There is only the family."

"No servants? Are you crazy?"

"Oh, no!" answered the man meditatively. "I do not think I am mad. The
servants all went away last night after dinner, with their belongings.
There were only sixteen left, men and women, for I counted them."

"Do you mean to say--" The Baroness stopped in the middle of her
question, staring in amazement.

The porter now nodded, as solemnly as he had before shaken his head.

"Yes. This is the end of the house of Conti."

Then he looked at her as if he wished to be questioned, for he knew
that she was not really a great lady, and guessed that in spite of her
magnificent superiority and coldness she was not above talking to a
servant about her friends.

"But they must have somebody," she said. "They must eat, I suppose!
Somebody must cook for them. They cannot starve!"

"Who knows? Who knows? Perhaps they will starve."

The porter evidently took a gloomy view of the case.

"But why did the servants go away in a body?" asked the Baroness,
descending from her social perch by the inviting ladder of curiosity.

"They never were paid. None of us ever got our wages. For some time
the family has paid nobody. The day before yesterday, the telephone
company sent a man to take away the instrument. Then the electric
light was cut off. When that happens, it is all over."

The man had heard of the phenomenon from a colleague.

"And there is nobody? They have nobody at all?"

The Baroness had always been rich, and was really trying to guess what
would happen to people who had no servants.

"There is my wife," said the porter. "But she is old," he added
apologetically, "and the palace is big. Can she sweep out three
hundred rooms, cook for two families of masters and dress the
Princess's hair? She cannot do it."

This was stated with gloomy gravity. The Baroness also shook her head
in sympathy.

"There were sixteen servants in the house yesterday," continued the
porter. "I remember when there were thirty, in the times of the old
Prince."

"There would be still, if the family had been wise," said the Baroness
severely. "Is your wife upstairs?"

"Who knows where she is?" enquired the porter by way of answer, and
with the air of a man who fears that he may never see his wife again.
"There are three hundred rooms. Who knows where she is?"

The Baroness was a practical woman by nature and by force of
circumstances; she made up her mind to go upstairs and see for herself
how matters stood. The name of Donna Clementina might not just now
carry much weight beside those of the patronesses of a complicated
charitable organization; in fact the poor lady must be in a position
to need charity herself rather than to dispense it to others. But the
Baroness had a deep-rooted prejudice in favour of the old aristocracy,
and guessed that it would afterwards be counted to her for
righteousness if she could be the first to offer boundless sympathy
and limited help to the distressed family.

It would be thought distinctly smart, for instance, if she should take
the Princess, or even one of the unmarried daughters, to her own house
for a few days, as a refuge from the sordid atmosphere of debt and
ruin, and beyond the reach of vulgar creditors, one of whom, by the
way, she knew to be her own excellent husband. The Princess was
probably not aware of that fact, for she had always lived in sublime
ignorance of everything connected with money, even since her husband's
death; and when good Pompeo Sassi tried to explain things, telling her
that she was quite ruined, she never listened to what he said. If the
family had debts, why did he not borrow money and pay them? That was
what he was paid for doing, after all. It was true that he had not
been paid for a year or two, but that was a wretched detail. Economy?
Had not the Princess given up her second maid, as an extravagance?
What more did the man expect?

The Baroness knew all this and reflected upon what she knew, as she
deliberately got out of her cab at the foot of the grand staircase.

"I will go upstairs myself," she said.

"Padrona," observed the porter, standing aside with his broom.

He explained in a single word that she was at liberty to go upstairs
if she chose, that it was not of the least use to go, and that he
would not be responsible for any disappointment if she were afterwards
not pleased. There is no language in the world which can say more in
one word than the Italian, or less in ten thousand, according to the
humour of the speaker.

The Baroness took no notice as she went up the stairs. She was not
very tall, and was growing slowly and surely stout, but she carried
her rather large head high and had cultivated importance, as a fine
art, with some success. She moved steadily, with a muffled sound as of
voluminous invisible silk bellows that opened and shut at each step;
her outer dress was sombre, but fashionable, and she wore a long gold
chain of curious and fine workmanship to carry her hand-glass, for she
was near-sighted. Her thick hair was iron-grey, her small round eyes
were vaguely dark with greenish lights, her complexion was like weak
coffee and milk, sallow, but smooth, even and healthy. She was a
strong woman of fifty years, well used to the world and its ways;
acquisitive, inquisitive and socially progressive; not knowing how to
wish back anything from the past, so long as there was anything in the
future to wish for; a good wife for an ambitious man.

The magnificent marble staircase already looked neglected; there were
deep shadows of dust in corners that should have been polished, there
was a coat of grey dust on the head and shoulders of the colossal
marble statue of Commodus in the niche on the first landing; in the
great window over the next, the armorial crowned eagle of the Conti,
cheeky, argent and sable, had a dejected look, as if he were moulting.

It was in March, and though the sun was shining brightly outside, and
the old porter wore his linen jacket, as if it were already spring,
there was a cold draught down the staircase, and the Baroness
instinctively made haste up the steps, and was glad when she reached
the big swinging door covered with red baize and studded with smart
brass nails, which gave access to the grand apartment.

By force of habit, she opened it and went in. There used to be always
two men in the outer hall, all day long, and sometimes four, ready to
announce visitors or to answer questions, as the case might be. It was
deserted now, a great, dismal, paved hall, already dingy with dust.
One of the box-benches was open, and the tail of a footman's livery
greatcoat which had been thrown in carelessly, hung over the edge and
dragged on the marble floor.

The Baroness realized that the porter had spoken the truth and that
all the servants had left the house, as the rats leave a sinking ship.
One must really have seen an old ship sink in harbour to know how the
rats look, black and grey, fat and thin, old and young, their tiny
beads of eyes glittering with fright as they scurry up the hatches and
make for every deck port and scupper, scrambling and tumbling over
each other till they flop into the water and swim away, racing for
safety, each making a long forked wake on the smooth surface, with a
steady quick ripple like the tearing of thin paper into strips.

The strong middle-aged woman who stood alone in the empty hall knew
nothing of sinking vessels or the ways of rats, but she had known
incidentally of more than one catastrophe like this, in the course of
her husband's ascendant career, and somehow he had always been
mysteriously connected with each one. An evil-speaking old diplomatist
had once said that he remembered Baron Volterra as a pawn-broking
dealer in antiquities, in Florence, thirty years earlier; there was
probably no truth in the story, but after Volterra was elected a
Senator of the Kingdom, a member of the opposition had alluded to it
with piquant irony and the result had been the exchange of several
bullets at forty paces, whereby honour was satisfied without
bloodshed. The seconds, who were well disposed to both parties, alone
knew how much or how little powder there was in the pistols, and they
were discreet men, who kept the secret.

The door leading to the antechamber was wide open, and the Baroness
went on deliberately, looking about through her hand-glass, in the
half light, for the shutters were not all open. Dust everywhere, the
dust that falls silently at night from the ancient wooden ceilings and
painted beams of Roman palaces, the dust of centuries accumulated
above and sifting for ever to the floors below. It was on the yellow
marble pier tables, on the dim mirrors in their eighteenth century
frames, on the high canopy draped with silver and black beneath which
the effigy of another big cheeky eagle seemed to be silently moulting
under his antique crown, the emblem of a race that had lived almost on
the same spot for eight hundred years, through good and bad repute,
but in nearly uninterrupted prosperity. The Baroness, who hankered
after greatness, felt that the gloom was a twilight of gods. She stood
still before the canopy, the symbol of princely rank and privilege,
the invisible silk bellows were silent for a few seconds, and she
wondered whether there were any procurable sum which she and her
husband would grudge in exchange for the acknowledged right to display
a crowned eagle, cheeky, argent and sable, in their hall, under a
canopy draped with their own colours. She sighed, since no one could
hear her, and she went on. The sigh was not only for the hopelessness
of ever reaching such social greatness; it was in part the outward
show of a real regret that it should have come to an untimely end. Her
admiration of princes was as sincere as her longing to be one of them;
she had at least the melancholy satisfaction of sympathizing with them
in their downfall. It brought her a little nearer to them in
imagination if not in fact.

The evolution of the snob has been going on quickly of late, and
quicker than ever since vast wealth has given so many of the species
the balance of at least one sort of power in society. His thoughts are
still the same, but his outward shape approaches strangely near to
that of the human being. There are snobs now, who behave almost as
nicely in the privacy of their homes as in the presence of a duchess.
They are much more particular as to the way in which others shall
behave to them. That is a test, by the bye. The snob thinks most of
the treatment he receives from the world; the gentleman thinks first
how he shall act courteously to others.

The Baroness went on and entered the outer reception room, and looking
before her she could see through the open doors of the succeeding
drawing-rooms, where the windows had been opened or perhaps not closed
on the previous evening. It was all vast, stately and deserted. Only
ten days earlier she had been in the same place at a great reception,
brilliant with beautiful women and handsome men, alive with the
flashing of jewels and decorations in the vivid light, full of the
discreet noise of society in good-humour, full of faces she knew, and
voices familiar, and of the moonlight of priceless pearls and the
sunlight of historic diamonds; all of which manifestations she dearly
loved.

Her husband had perhaps known what was coming, and how soon, but she
had not. There was something awful in the contrast. As she went
through one of the rooms a mouse ran from under the fringe of a velvet
curtain and took refuge under an armchair. She had sat in that very
chair ten days ago and the Russian ambassador had talked to her; she
remembered how he had tried to extract information from her about the
new issue of three and a half per cent national bonds, because her
husband was one of the financiers who were expected to "manipulate"
the loan.

A portrait of a Conti in black velvet, by Velasquez, looked down,
coldly supercilious, at the empty armchair under which the mouse was
hiding. It could make no difference, great or small, to him, whether
the Baroness Volterra ever sat there again to talk with an ambassador;
he had sat where he pleased, undisturbed in his own house, to the end
of his days, and no one can take the past from the dead, except a
modern German historian.

Not a sound broke the stillness, except the steady plash of the water
falling into the fountain in the wide court, heard distinctly through
the closed windows. The Baroness wondered if any one were awake except
the old porter downstairs. She knew the house tolerably well. Only the
Princess and her two unmarried daughters slept in the apartment she
had entered, far off, at the very end, in rooms at the corner
overlooking the small square and the narrow street. The rest of the
old palace was surrounded by dark and narrow streets, but the court
was wide and full of sunshine. The only son of the house, though he
was now the Prince, lived on the floor above, with his young wife and
their only child, in what had been a separate establishment, after the
old Roman custom.

The Baroness went to one of the embrasures of the great drawing-room
and looked through the panes at the windows of the upper story. All
that she could see were shut; there was not a sign of life in the huge
building. Ruin had closed in upon it and all it held, softly, without
noise and without pity.

It was their own fault, of course, but the Baroness was sorry for
them, for she was not quite heartless, in spite of her hard face. The
gloomiest landscape must have a ray of light in it, somewhere. It was
all their own fault; they should have known better; they should have
counted what they had instead of spending what they had not. But their
fall was great, as everything had been in their prosperity, and it was
interesting to be connected with it. She faintly hoped Volterra would
keep the palace now that they could certainly never pay any more
interest on the mortgage, and it was barely possible that she might
some day live in it herself, though she understood that it would be in
very bad taste to occupy it at once. But this was unlikely, for her
husband had a predilection for a new house, in the new part of the
city, full of new furniture and modern French pictures. He had a
pronounced dislike for old things, including old pictures and old
jewellery, though he knew much about both. Possibly they reminded him
of that absurd story, and of his duel at forty paces.

Volterra would sell the palace to the Vatican, with everything in it,
and would look about for another lucrative investment. The Vatican
bought all the palaces in the market for religious institutions, and
when there were not enough "it" built the finest buildings in Rome for
its own purposes. Volterra was mildly anti-clerical in politics, but
he was particularly fond of dealing with the Vatican for real estate.
The Vatican was a most admirable house of business, in his estimation,
keen, punctual and always solvent; it was good for a financier to be
associated with such an institution. It drove a hard bargain, but
there was never any hesitation about fulfilling its obligations to the
last farthing. Dreaming over one of his enormous Havanas after a
perfect dinner, Baron Volterra, Senator of the Kingdom of Italy, often
wondered whether the prosperity of the whole world would not be vastly
increased if the Vatican would consent to be the general financial
agent for the European nations. Such stability as there would be, such
order! Above all, such guarantees of good faith! Besides all that,
there were its cordial relations with the United States, that is to
say, with the chief source of the world's future wealth! The Senator's
strongly-marked face grew sweetly thoughtful as he followed his own
visions in the air, and when his wife spoke of living in an antiquated
Roman palace and buying an estate with an old title attached to it,
which the King might graciously be pleased to ratify, he playfully
tapped his wife's sallow cheek with two fat fingers and smiled in a
way that showed how superior he was to such weakness. It was not even
worth while to say anything.

Once more the Baroness sighed as she turned from the window. She meant
to have her own way in the end, but it was hard to wait so long. She
turned from the window, glanced at a beautiful holy family by
Bonifazio which hung on the opposite wall above an alabaster table,
estimated its value instinctively and went on into the next drawing-
room.

As she passed through the door, a low cry of pain made her start and
hesitate, and she stood still. The degree of her acquaintance with the
members of the family was just such that she would not quite dare to
intrude upon them if they had given way to an expression of pardonable
weakness under their final misfortune, whereas if they were bearing it
with reasonable fortitude she could allow herself to offer her
sympathy and even some judicious help.

She stood still and the sound was repeated, the pitiful little
tearless complaint of a young thing suffering alone. It was somewhere
in the big room, hidden amongst the furniture; which was less stiffly
arranged here than in the outer apartments. There were books and
newspapers on the table, the fireplace was half-full of the ashes of a
burnt-out fire, there were faded flowers in a tall vase near the
window, there was the undefinable presence of life in the heavier and
warmer air. At first the Baroness had thought that the cry came from
some small animal, hurt and forgotten there in the great catastrophe;
a moment later she was sure that there was some one in the room.

She moved cautiously forward in the direction whence the sound had
come. Then she saw the edge of a fawn-coloured cloth skirt on the red
carpet by an armchair. She went on, hesitating no longer. She had seen
the frock only a day or two ago, and it belonged to Sabina Conti.

A very fair young girl was kneeling in the shadow, crouching over
something on the floor. Her hair was like the pale mist in the
morning, tinged with gold. She was very slight, and as she bent down,
her slender neck was dazzling white above the collar of her frock. She
was trembling a little.

"My dear Sabina, what has happened?" asked the Baroness Volterra,
leaning over her with an audible crack in the region of the waist.

At the words the girl turned up her pale face, without the least start
of surprise.

"It is dead," she said, in a very low voice.

The Baroness looked down, and saw a small bunch of yellow feathers
lying on the floor at the girl's knees; the poor little head with its
colourless beak lay quite still on the red carpet, turned upon one
side, as if it were resting.

"A canary," observed the Baroness, who had never had a pet in her
life, and had always wondered how any one could care for such stupid
things.

But the violet eyes gazed up to hers reproachfully and wonderingly.

"It is dead."

That should explain everything; surely the woman must understand. Yet
there was no response. The Baroness stood upright again, grasping her
parasol and looking down with a sort of respectful indifference.
Sabina said nothing, but took up the dead bird very tenderly, as if it
could still feel that she loved it, and she pressed it softly to her
breast, bending her head to it, and then kissing the yellow feathers.
When it was alive it used to nestle there, almost as it lay now. It
had been very tame.

"I suppose a cat killed it," said the Baroness, wishing to say
something.

Sabina shook her head. She had found it lying there, not wounded, its
feathers not torn--just dead. It was of no use to answer. She rose to
her feet, still holding the tiny body against her bosom, and she
looked at the Baroness, mutely asking what had brought her there, and
wishing that she would go away.

"I came to see your sister," said the elder woman, with something like
apology in the tone.

Sabina was still very pale, and her delicate lips were pressed
together, but there were no tears in her eyes, as she waited for the
Baroness to say more.

"Then I heard the bad news," the latter continued. "I heard it from
the porter."

Sabina looked at her quietly. If she had heard the bad news, why had
she not gone away? The Baroness began to feel uncomfortable. She
almost quailed before the pale girl of seventeen, slender as a birch
sapling in her light frock.

"It occurred to me," she continued nervously, "that I might be of
use."

"You are very kind," Sabina answered, with the faintest air of
surprise, "but I really do not see that you could do anything."

"Perhaps your mother would allow you to spend a few days with me--
until things are more settled," suggested the Baroness.

"Thank you very much. I do not think she would like that. She would
not wish me to be away from her just now, I am sure. Why should I
leave her?"

The Baroness Volterra did not like to point out that the Princess
Conti might soon be literally homeless.

"May I ask your mother?" she enquired. "Should you like to come to me
for a few days?"

"If my mother wishes it."

"But should you like to come?" persisted the elder woman.

"If my mother thinks it is best," answered Sabina, avoiding the
Baroness's eyes, as she resolutely avoided answering the direct
question.

But the Baroness was determined if possible to take in one of the
family, and it had occurred to her that Sabina would really be less
trouble than her mother or elder sister. Clementina was the eldest and
was already looked upon as an old maid. She was intensely devout, and
that was always troublesome, for it meant that she would insist upon
going to church at impossibly early hours, and must have fish-dinners
on Fridays. But it would certainly be conferring a favour on the
Princess to take Sabina off her hands at such a time. The devout
Clementina could take care of herself. With her face, the Baroness
reflected, she would be safe among Cossacks; besides, she could go
into a retreat, and stay there, if necessary. Sabina was quite
different.

The Princess thought so too, as it turned out. Sabina took the visitor
to her mother's door, knocked, opened and then went away, still
pressing her dead canary to her bosom, and infinitely glad to be alone
with it at last.

There was confusion in the Princess Conti's bedroom, the amazing
confusion which boils up about an utterly careless woman of the great
world, if she be accidentally left without a maid for twenty-four
hours. It seemed as if everything the Princess possessed in the way of
clothes, necessary and unnecessary, had been torn from wardrobes and
chests of drawers by a cyclone and scattered in every direction, till
there was not space to move or sit down in a room which was thirty
feet square.

Princess Conti was a very stout woman of about the same age as her
visitor, but not resembling her in the least. She had been beautiful,
and still kept the dazzling complexion and magnificent eyes for which
she had been famous. It was her boast that she slept eight hours every
night, without waking, whatever happened, and she always advised
everybody to do the same, with an airy indifference to possibilities
which would have done credit to a doctor.

She was dressed, or rather wrapped, in a magnificent purple velvet
dressing-gown, trimmed with sable, and tied round her ample waist with
a silver cord; her rather scanty grey hair stood out about her head
like a cloud in a high wind; and her plump hands were encased in a
pair of old white gloves, which looked oddly out of place. She was
standing in the middle of the room, and she smiled calmly as the
Baroness entered. On a beautiful inlaid table beside her stood a
battered brass tray with an almost shapeless little brass coffee-pot,
a common earthenware cup, chipped at the edges, and three pieces of
doubtful-looking sugar in a tiny saucer, also of brass. The whole had
evidently been brought from a small cafe near by, which had long been
frequented by the servants from the palace.

Judging from her smile, the Princess seemed to think total ruin rather
an amusing incident. She had always complained that the Romans were
very dull; for she was not a Roman herself, but came of a very great
old Polish family, the members of which had been distinguished for
divers forms of amiable eccentricity during a couple of centuries.

She looked at the Baroness, and smiled pleasantly, showing her still
perfect teeth.

"I always said that this would happen," she observed. "I always told
my poor husband so."

As the Prince had been dead ten years, the Baroness thought that he
might not be wholly responsible for the ruin of his estate, but she
discreetly avoided the suggestion. She began to make a little apology
for her visit.

"But I am delighted to see you!" cried the Princess. "You can help me
to pack. You know I have not a single maid, not a woman in the house,
nor a man either. Those ridiculous servants fled last night as if we
had the plague!"

"So you are going out of town?" enquired the Baroness, laying down her
parasol.

"Of course. Clementina has decided to be a nun, and is going to the
convent this morning. So sensible of her, poor dear! It is true that
she has made up her mind to do it three or four times before now, but
the circumstances were different, and I hope this will be final. She
will be much happier."

The Princess stirred the muddy coffee in the chipped earthenware cup,
and then sipped it thoughtfully, sipped it again, and made a face.

"You see my breakfast," she said, and then laughed, as if the shabby
brass tray were a part of the train of amusing circumstances. "The
porter's wife went and got it at some dirty little cafe," she added.

"How dreadful!" exclaimed the Baroness, with more real sympathy in her
voice than she had yet shown.

"I assure you," the Princess answered serenely, "that I am glad to
have any coffee at all. I always told poor dear Paolo that it would
come to this."

She swallowed the rest of the coffee with a grimace. and set down the
cup. Then, with the most natural gesture in the world, she pushed the
tray a little way across the inlaid table, towards the Baroness, as
she would have pushed it towards her maid, and as if she wished the
thing taken away. She did it merely from force of habit, no doubt.

Baroness Volterra understood well enough, and for a moment she
affected not to see. The Princess had the blood of Polish kings in her
veins, mingled with that of several mediatized princes, but that was
no reason why she should treat a friend like a servant; especially as
the friend's husband practically owned the palace and its contents,
and had lent the money with which the high and mighty lady and her son
had finally ruined themselves. Yet so overpowering is the moral
domination of the born aristocrat over the born snob, that the
Baroness changed her mind, and humbly took the obnoxious tray away and
set it down on another table near the door.

"Thank you so much," said the Princess graciously. "It smells, you
know."

"Of course," answered the Baroness. "It is not coffee at all! It is
made of chicory and acorns."

"I do not know what it is made of," said the Princess, without
interest, "but it has an atrociously bad smell, and it has made a
green stain on my handkerchief."

She looked at the bit of transparently fine linen with which she had
touched her lips, and threw it under the table.

"And Sabina?" began the Baroness. "What shall you do with her?"

"I wish I knew! You see, my daughter-in-law has a little place
somewhere in the Maremma. It is an awful hole, I believe, and very
unhealthy, but we shall have to stay there for a few days. Then I
shall go to Poland and see my brother. I am sure he can arrange
everything at once, and we shall come back to Rome in the autumn, of
course, just as usual. Sassi told me only last week that two or three
millions would be enough. And what is that? My brother is so rich!"

The stout Princess shrugged her shoulders carelessly, as if a few
millions of francs more or less could really not be such a great
matter. Somebody had always found money for her to spend, and there
was no reason why obliging persons should not continue to do the same.
The Baroness showed no surprise, but wondered whether the Princess
might not have to lunch, and dine too, on some nauseous little mess
brought to her on a battered brass tray. It was quite possible that
she might not find five francs in her purse; it was equally possible
that she might find five thousand; the only thing quite sure was that
she had not taken the trouble to look, and did not care a straw.

"Can I be of any immediate use?" asked the Baroness with unnecessary
timidity. "Do you need ready money?"

"Ready money?" echoed the Princess with alacrity. "Of course I do! I
told you, Sassi says that two or three millions would be enough to go
on with."

"I did not mean that. I am afraid--"

"Oh!" ejaculated the Princess with a little disappointment. "Nothing
else would be of any use. Of course I have money for any little thing
I need. There is my purse. Do you mind looking? I know I had two or
three thousand francs the other day. There must be something left.
Please count it. I never can count right, you know."

The Baroness took up the mauve morocco pocket-book to which the
Princess pointed. It had a clasp in which a pretty sapphire was set;
she opened it and took out a few notes and silver coins, which she
counted.

"There are fifty-seven francs," she said.

"Is that all?" asked the Princess with supreme indifference. "How very
odd!"

"You can hardly leave Rome with so little," observed the Baroness.
"Will you not allow me to lend you five hundred? I happen to have a
five hundred franc note in my purse, for I was going to pay a bill on
my way home."

"Thanks," said the Princess. "That will save me the trouble of sending
for Sassi. He always bores me dreadfully with his figures. Thank you
very much."

"Not at all, dear friend," the Baroness answered. "It is a pleasure, I
assure you. But I had thought of asking if you would let Sabina come
and stay with me for a little while, until your affairs are more
settled."

"Oh, would you do that?" asked the Princess with something like
enthusiasm. "I really do not know what to do with the girl. Of course,
I could take her to Poland and marry her there, but she is so
peculiar, such a strange child, not at all like me. It really would be
immensely kind of you to take her, if your husband does not object."

"He will be delighted."

"Yes," acquiesced the Princess calmly. "You see," she continued in a
meditative tone, "if I sent her to stay with any of our cousins here,
I am sure they would ask her all sorts of questions about our affairs,
and she is so silly that she would blurt out everything she fancied
she knew, whether it were true or not--about my son and his wife, you
know, and then, the money questions. Poor Sabina! she has not a
particle of tact! It really would be good of you to take her. I shall
be so grateful."

"I will bring my maid to pack her things," suggested the Baroness.

"Yes. If she could only help me to pack mine too! Do you think she
would?"

"Of course!"

"You are really the kindest person in the world," said the Princess.
"I was quite in despair, when you came. Just look at those things!"

She pointed to the chairs and sofas, covered with clothes and dresses.

"But your boxes, where are they?" asked the Baroness.

"I have not the least idea! I sent the porter's wife to try and find
them, but she has never come back. She is so stupid, poor old thing!"

"I think I had better bring a couple of men-servants," said the
Baroness. "They may be of use. Should you like my carriage to take you
to the station? Anything I can do--"

The Princess stared, as if quite puzzled.

"Thanks, but we have plenty of horses," she said.

"Yes, but you said that all your servants had left last night. I
supposed the coachman and grooms were gone too."

"I daresay they are!" The Princess laughed. "Then we will go in cabs.
It will be very amusing. By the bye, I wonder whether those brutes of
men thought of leaving the poor horses anything to eat, and water! I
must really go and see. Poor beasts! They will be starving. Will you
come with me?"

She moved towards the door, really very much concerned, for she loved
horses.

"Will you go down like that?" asked the Baroness aghast, glancing at
the purple velvet dressing-gown, and noticing, as the Princess moved,
that her feet, on which she wore small kid slippers, were
stockingless.

"Why not? I shall not catch cold. I never do."

The Baroness would have given anything to be above caring whether any
one should ever see her, or not, on the stairs of her house in a
purple dressing-gown, without stockings and with her hair standing on
end; and she pondered on the ways of the aristocracy she adored,
especially as represented by her Excellency Marie-Sophie-Hedwige-
Zenaide-Honorine-Pia Rubomirska, Dowager Princess Conti. Ever
afterwards she associated purple velvet and bare feet with the idea of
financial catastrophe, knowing in her heart that even ruin would seem
bearable if it could bring her such magnificent indifference to the
details of commonplace existence.

At that moment, however, she felt that she was in the position of a
heaven-sent protectress to the Princess.

"No," she said firmly. "I will go myself to the stables, and the
porter shall feed the horses if there is no groom. You really must not
go downstairs looking like that!"

"Why not?" asked the Princess, surprised. "But of course, if you will
be so kind as to see whether the horses need anything, it is quite
useless for me to go myself. You will promise? I am sure they are
starving by this time."

The Baroness promised solemnly, and said that she would come back
within an hour, with her servants, to take away Sabina and to help the
Princess's preparations. In consideration of all she was doing the
Princess kissed her on both her sallow cheeks as she took her leave.
The Princess attached no importance at all to this mark of
affectionate esteem, but it pleased the Baroness very much.

Just as the latter was going away, the door opened suddenly, and a
weak-looking young man put in his head.

"Mamma! Mamma!" he cried, in a thin tone of distress, almost as if he
were going to cry.

He was nearly thirty years old, though he looked younger. He was thin,
and pale, with a muddy and spotted complexion, and his scanty black
hair grew far back on his poorly developed forehead. His eyes had a
look that was half startled, half false. Though he was carefully
dressed he had not shaved, because he could not shave himself and his
valet had departed with the rest of the servants. He was the
Princess's only son, himself the present Prince, and the heir of all
the Conti since the year eleven hundred.

"Mamma!"

"What is the matter, sweetheart?" asked the Princess, with ready
sympathy. "Your hands are quite cold! Are you ill?"

"The child! Something has happened to it--we do not know--it looks so
strange--its eyes are turned in and it is such a dreadful colour--do
come--"

But the Princess was already on her way, and he spoke the last words
as he ran after her. She turned her head as she went on.

"For heaven's sake send a doctor!" she cried to the Baroness, and in a
moment she was gone, with the weak young man close at her side.

The Baroness nodded quickly, and when all three reached the door she
left the two to go upstairs and ran down, with a tremendous puffing of
the invisible silk bellows.

"The Prince's little girl is very ill," she said, as she passed the
porter, who was now polishing the panes of glass in the door of his
lodge, because he had done the same thing every morning for twenty
years.

He almost dropped the dingy leather he was using, but before he could
answer, the cab passed out, bearing the Baroness on her errand.





CHAPTER II




Signor Pompeo Sassi sat in his dingy office and tore his hair, in the
good old literal Italian sense. His elbows rested on the shabby black
oilcloth glued to the table, and his long knotted fingers twisted his
few remaining locks, on each side of his head, in a way that was
painful to see. From time to time he desisted for an instant, and held
up his open hands, the fingers quivering with emotion, and his watery
eyes were turned upwards, too, as if directing an unspoken prayer to
the dusty rafters of the ceiling. The furrows had deepened of late in
his respectable, trust-inspiring face, and he was as thin as a
skeleton in leather.

His heart was broken. On the big sheet of thick hand-made paper, that
lay on the desk, scribbled over with rough calculations in violet ink,
there were a number of trial impressions of the old stamp he had once
been so proud to use. It bore a rough representation of the Conti
eagle, encircled by the legend: "Eccellentissima Casa Conti." When his
eyes fell upon it, they filled with tears. The Most Excellent House of
Conti had come to a pitiful end, and it had been Pompeo Sassi's
unhappy fate to see its fall. Judging from his looks, he was not to
survive the catastrophe very long.

He loved the family, and yet he disliked every member of it personally
except Sabina. He loved the "Eccellentissima Casa," the checky eagle,
the Velasquez portraits and his dingy office, but he never had spoken
with the Princess, her son, his wife, or his sister Clementina,
without a distinct feeling of disapproving aversion. The old Prince
had been different. In him Sassi had still been able to respect those
traditional Ciceronian virtues which were inculcated with terrific
severity in the Roman youth of fifty years ago. But the Prince had
died prematurely at the age of fifty, and with him the Ciceronian
traditions had ended in Casa Conti, and their place had been taken by
the caprices of the big, healthy, indolent, extravagant Polish woman,
by the miserable weaknesses of a degenerate heir, and the fanatic
religious practices of Donna Clementina.

Sassi was sure that they all three hated him or despised him, or both;
yet they could not spare him. For different reasons, they all needed
money, and they had long been used to believing that no one but Sassi
could get it for them, since no one else knew how deeply the family
was involved. He always made difficulties, he protested, he wrung his
hands, he warned, he implored; but caprice, vice and devotion always
overcame his objections, and year after year the exhausted estate was
squeezed and pressed and mortgaged and sold, till it had yielded the
uttermost farthing.

Then, one day, the whole organization of Casa Conti stood still; the
unpaid servants fled, the unpaid tradesmen refused to trust any
longer, the unpaid holders of mortgages foreclosed, the Princess
departed to Poland, the Prince slunk away to live on what was left of
his wife's small estate, Donna Clementina buried herself in a convent
to which she had given immense sums, the Conti palace was for sale,
and Pompeo Sassi sat alone in his office, tearing his hair, while the
old porter sat in his lodge downstairs peeling potatoes.

It was not for himself that the old steward of the estate was in
danger of being totally bald. He had done for himself what others
would not allow him to do for them, a proceeding which affords some
virtuous people boundless satisfaction, though it procured him none at
all. He was provided for in his old age. During more than thirty years
he had saved and scraped and invested and added to the little sum of
money left him by his father, an honest old notary of the old school,
until he possessed what was a very comfortable competence for a
childless old man. He had a small house of his own near the Pantheon,
in which he occupied two rooms, letting the rest, and he had a hundred
thousand francs in government bonds, besides a few acres of vineyard
on the slope of Monte Mario.

More than once, in the sincerity of his devotion to the family he
served, he had thought of sacrificing all he possessed in an attempt
to stave off final ruin; but a very little reflection had convinced
him that all he had would be a mere drop in the flood of extravagance,
and would forthwith disappear with the rest into the bottomless pit of
debt.

Even that generous temptation was gone now. The house having
collapsed, its members appeared to him only in their true natures, a
good-for-nothing young man, tainted with a mortal disease, a foolish
mother, a devout spinster threatened with religious mania, and the
last descendant of the great old race, one little girl-child not
likely to live, and perhaps better dead. In their several ways they
had treated him as the contemptible instrument of their inclinations;
they were gone from his life and he was glad of it, when he thought of
each one separately. Yet, collectively, he wished them all in the
palace again, even a month ago, even on the day before the exodus;
good, bad, indifferent, no matter what, they had been Casa Conti
still, to the end, the family he had served faithfully, honestly and
hopelessly for upwards of a third of a century. That might seem to be
inconsistent, but it was the only consistency he had ever known, and
it was loyalty, of a kind.

But there was one whom he wished back for her own sake; there was
Donna Sabina. When he thought of her, his hands fell from his head at
last, and folded themselves over the scrawled figures on the big sheet
of paper, and he looked long and steadily at them, without seeing them
at all.

He wondered what would become of her. He had seen her on the last day
and he should never forget it. Before going away with the Baroness
Volterra she had found her way to his dark office, and had stood a few
moments before the shabby old table, with a small package in her hand.
He could see the slight figure still, when he closed his eyes, and her
misty hair against the cold light of the window. She had come to ask
him if he would bury her dead canary, somewhere under the sky where
there was grass and it would not be disturbed. Where could she bury
it, down in the heart of Rome? She had wrapped it in a bit of pink
satin and had laid it in a little brown cardboard box which had been
full of chocolates from Ronzi and Singer's in Piazza Colonna. She
pushed back the lid a finger's breadth and he saw the pink satin for a
second. She laid the box before him. Would he please do what she
asked? Very timidly she slipped a simple little ring off her finger,
one of those gold ones with the sacred monogram which foreigners
insist upon calling "Pax." She said she had bought it with her own
money, and could give it away. She wished to give it to him. He
protested, refused, but the fathomless violet eyes gazed into his very
reproachfully. He had always been so kind to her, she said; would he
not keep the little ring to remember her by?

So he had taken it, and that same day he had gone all the way to his
lonely vineyard on Monte Mario carrying the chocolate box in his
hands, and he had buried it under the chestnut-tree at the upper end,
where there was some grass; and the breeze always blew there on summer
afternoons. Then he had sat on the roots of the tree for a while,
looking towards Rome.

He would have plenty of time to go to the vineyard now, for in a
little while he should have nothing to do, as the palace was going to
be sold. When he got home, he wrote a formal letter to Donna Sabina,
informing her that he had fulfilled the commands she had deigned to
give him, and ventured to subscribe himself her Excellency's most
devoted, humble and grateful servant, as indeed he was, from the
bottom of his heart. In twenty-four hours he received a note from her,
written in a delicate tall hand, not without character, on paper
bearing the address of Baron Volterra's house in Via Ludovisi. She
thanked him in few words, warmly and simply. He read the note several
times and then put it away in an old-fashioned brass-bound secretary,
of which he always kept the key in his pocket. It was the only word of
thanks he had received from any living member of the Conti family.

A month had passed since then, but as he sat at his desk it was all as
vivid as if it had happened yesterday.

He was in his office to-day because he had received notice that some
one was coming to look at the palace with a view to buying it, and he
considered it his duty to show it to possible purchasers. Baron
Volterra had sent him word in the morning, and he had come early.
Then, as he sat in his old place, the ruin of the great house had
enacted itself again before his eyes, so vividly that the pain had
been almost physical. And then, he had fallen to thinking of Sabina,
and wondering what was to become of her. That was the history of one
half-hour in his life, on a May afternoon; but the whole man was in
it, what he had been thirty years earlier, and a month ago, what he
was to-day and what he would be to the end of his life.





CHAPTER III




If Sabina had known what was before her when she got into the Baroness
Volterra's carriage and was driven up to the Via Ludovisi, followed by
a cab with her luggage, she would probably have begged leave to go
with her elder sister to the convent. Her mother would most likely
have refused the permission, and she would have been obliged to accept
the Volterras' hospitality after all, but she would have had the
satisfaction of having made an effort to keep her freedom before
entering into what she soon looked upon as slavery.

Her mother would have considered this another evidence of the folly
inherent in all the Conti family. Sabina lived in a luxurious house,
she was treated with consideration, she saw her friends, and desirable
young men saw her. What more could she wish?

All this was true. The Baroness was at great pains to make much of
her, and the Baron's manner to her was at once flattering, respectful
and paternal. During the first few days she had discovered that if she
accidentally expressed the smallest wish it was instantly fulfilled,
and this was so embarrassing that she had since taken endless pains
never to express any wish at all. Moreover not the slightest allusion
to the misfortunes of her family was ever made before her, and if she
was in total ignorance of the state of affairs, she was at least
spared the humiliation of hearing that the palace was for sale, and
might be sold any day, to any one who would pay the price asked.

From time to time the Baroness said she hoped that Sabina had good
news of her mother, but showed no curiosity in the matter, and the
girl always answered that she believed her mother to be quite well.
Indeed she did believe it, for she supposed that if the Princess were
ill some one would let her know. She wrote stiff little letters
herself, every Sunday morning, and addressed them to her uncle's place
in Poland; but no one ever took the least notice of these
conscientious communications, and she wondered why she sent them,
after all. It was a remnant of the sense of duty to her parents
instilled into her in the convent, and she could not help clinging to
it still, from habit.

She had a few friends of her own age, and they came to see her now and
then. They were mostly companions of her recent convent days, and they
asked her many questions, to most of which she had no answer. She
noticed that they looked surprised, but they were well brought up
girls, and kept their reflections to themselves, until they were at
home.

The Conti had fewer near relations than most Roman families, for of
late they had not been numerous. The Prince's only sister had died
childless, the dowager Princess was a Pole, and her daughter-in-law
was a Tuscan. Sabina and her generation had therefore no first
cousins; and those who were one degree or more removed were glad that
they had not been asked to take charge of the girl after the
catastrophe. It would have been all very well merely to give her a
room and a place at table, but the older ones shook their heads, and
said that before long the Baroness Volterra would have to dress her
too, and give her pocket-money. Her good-for-nothing brother would not
do anything for her, if he could, and the Princess, who was amusing
herself in Poland, if not in Paris, was capable of forgetting her
existence for a year at a time.

All these things greatly enhanced the outward and visible merit of the
Volterra couple, but made Sabina's position daily less endurable. So
the Baroness laid up treasures in heaven while Sabina unwillingly
stored trouble on earth.

She was proud, to begin with. It was bad enough to have been ordered
by her mother to accept the hospitality of people she did not like,
but it was almost unbearable to realize by degrees that she was living
on their effusive charity. If she had been as vain as she was proud,
she would probably have left their house to take refuge in her
sister's convent, for her vanity could not have borne the certainty
that all society knew what her position was. The foundation of pride
is the wish to respect oneself, whatever others may think; the
mainspring of vanity is the craving for the admiration of others, no
matter at what cost to one's self-respect. In the Conti family these
qualities and defects were unevenly distributed, for while pride
seemed to have been left out in the character of Sabina's brother, who
was vain and arrogant, she herself was as unspoilt by vanity as she
was plentifully supplied with the characteristic which is said to have
caused Lucifer's fall, but which has been the mainstay of many a
greatly-tempted man and woman. Perhaps what is a fault in angels may
seem to be almost a virtue in humanity, compared with the meanness of
worse failings.

Sabina was not suspicious, yet she could not help wondering why the
Baroness had been so very anxious to take her in, and sometimes she
thought that the object might be to marry her to one of Volterra's two
sons. One was in a cavalry regiment stationed in Turin, the other was
in the diplomacy and was now in Washington. They were both doing very
well in their careers and their father and mother often talked of
them.

The Baron was inclined to be playful now and then.

"Ah, my dear young lady," he would cry, shaking one fat finger at
Sabina across the dinner table, "take care, take care! You will lose
your heart to both my boys and sow discord in my family!"

At this he never failed to laugh, and his wife responded with a smile
of motherly pride, followed by a discreet side glance at Sabina's
delicate face. Then the finely-pencilled eyebrows were just the least
bit more arched for a second, and the slender neck grew slightly
straighter, but that was all, and the Baron did not even see the
change. Sometimes Sabina said nothing, but sometimes she asked if the
sons were coming home on leave. No, they were not coming at present.
In the spring Volterra and his wife generally spent a few weeks in
Turin, to see the elder son, on their way to Aix and Paris, but his
brother could hardly expect to come home for another year. Then the
couple would talk about both the young men, until Sabina's attention
wandered, and she no longer heard what they were saying.

She did not believe that they really thought of trying to marry her to
one of the sons. In her own opinion they could gain nothing by it; she
had no dowry now, and her mother had always talked of marriage as a
business transaction. It did not occur to her that they could care to
be allied with a ruined family, and that her mere name could be worth
anything in their scale of values. They were millionaires, of course,
and even the dowry which she might formerly have expected would have
been nothing compared with their fortune; but her mother had always
said that rich people were the very people who cared the most for
money. That was the reason why they were rich. This explanation was so
logical that Sabina had accepted it as the true one.

Her knowledge of the world was really limited to what she had learned
from her mother, after she had come back from the convent six months
before the crash, and it was an odd mixture of limitations and
exaggerations. When the Princess was in a good humour she believed in
everybody; when she was not, which was when she had no money to throw
away, she attributed the basest motives to all mankind. According to
her moods, she had encouraged Sabina to look forward to a life of
perpetual pleasure, or had assured her with energy that all men were
liars, and that the world was a wretched place after all. It was true
that the Princess entertained the cheerful view more often than not,
which was perhaps fortunate for her daughter; but in her heart the
young girl felt that she would have to rely on her own common sense to
form any opinion of life, and as her position became more difficult,
while the future did not grow more defined, she tried to think
connectedly about it all, and to reach some useful conclusion.

It was not easy. In her native city, living under the roof of people
who held a strong position in the society to which she belonged,
though they had not been born to it, she was as completely isolated as
if she had been suddenly taken away and set down amongst strangers in
Australia. She was as lonely as she could have been on a desert
island.

The Volterra couple were radically, constitutionally, congenitally
different from the men and women she had seen in her mother's house.
She could not have told exactly where the difference lay, for she was
too young, and perhaps too simple. She did not instinctively like
them, but she had never really felt any affection for her mother
either, and her own brother and sister had always repelled her. Her
mother had sometimes treated her like a toy, but more often as a
nuisance and a hindrance in life, to be kept out of the way as much,
as possible, and married off on the first opportunity. Yet Sabina knew
that far down in her nature there was a mysterious tie of some sort,
an intuition that often told her what her mother would say or do,
though she herself would have spoken and acted otherwise. She had felt
it even with her brother and sister, but she could not feel it at all
with the Baron or his wife. She never could guess what they might do
or say under the most ordinary circumstances, nor what things they
would like and dislike, nor how they would regard anything she said or
did; least of all could she understand why they were so anxious to
keep her with them.

It was all a mystery, but life itself was mysterious, and she was
little more than a child in years though she had never had what one
calls a real childhood.

She often used to sit by her window, the sliding blinds partly drawn
together, but leaving a space through which she could look down at the
city, with a glimpse of Saint Peter's in the distance against the warm
haze of the low Campagna. Rome seemed as far from her then as if she
saw it in a vision a thousand miles away, and the very faint sounds
from the distance were like voices in a dream. Then, if she closed her
eyes a moment, she could see the dark streets about the Palazzo Conti,
and the one open corner of the palace, high up in the sunlight; she
could smell the acrid air that used to come up to her in the early
morning when the panes were opened, damp and laden with odours not
sweet but familiar in the heart of Rome; odours compounded of
cabbages, stables, cheese and mud, and occasionally varied by the
fumes of roasting coffee, or the sour vapours from a wine cart that
was unloading stained casks, all wet with red juice, at the door of
the wine shop far below, a dark little wine shop with a dry bush stuck
out through a smoky little grated window, and a humble sign displaying
the prices of drink in roughly painted blue and red figures. For her
room had looked upon the narrowest and darkest of the streets, though
it had been stately enough within, and luxuriously furnished, besides
containing some objects of value and beauty over which there would be
much bidding and squabbling of amateurs and experts when the great
sale took place.

It had been gloomy and silent and loveless, the life down there; and
yet she would have gone back to it if she could, from the sunshine of
the Via Ludovisi, and from the overpowering freshness of the Volterra
house, where everything was modern, and polished, and varnished, and
in perfect condition, suggesting that things had been just paid for.
She had not liked the old life, but she liked her present surroundings
even less, and at times she felt a furious longing to leave them
suddenly, without warning; to go out when no one would notice her, and
never to come back; to go she knew not where, out into the world,
risking she knew not what, a high-born, penniless, fair-haired girl
not yet eighteen.

What would happen, if she did? She rarely laughed, but she would laugh
at that, when she thought of the consternation her flight would
produce. How puzzled the fat Baron would look, how the Baroness's thin
mouth would be drawn down at the corners! How the invisible silk
bellows would puff as she ran up and down stairs, searching the house
for Sabina!

There was more than one strain of wild blood in the delicate girl's
veins, and the spring had come suddenly, with a bursting out of
blossom and life and colour, and a twittering of nesting birds in the
old gardens, and a rush of strange longings in her heart.

Then Sabina told herself that there was nothing to keep her where she
was, but her own will, and that no one would really care what became
of her in the wide world; certainly not her mother, who had never
written her so much as a line, nor sent her a message, since they had
parted on the day of the catastrophe; certainly not her brother;
probably not even her sister, whose whole being was absorbed in the
tyrannical government of what she called her soul. Sabina, in her
thoughts, irreverently compared Clementina's soul to a race-horse, and
her sister to a jockey, riding it cruelly with whip and spur to the
goal of salvation, whether it liked it or not.

Sabina rose from her seat by the window, when she thought of liberty,
and she walked up and down her room, driven by something she could not
understand, and yet withheld by something she understood even less.
For it was not fear, nor reflection, nor even common sense nor the
thought of giving pain to any one that hindered her from leaving the
house at such moments. It was not even the memory of the one human
being who had hitherto loved her, and for whom she had felt affection
and gratitude,--one of the nuns at the convent school, a brave, quiet
little lady who made her believe in good. She meant to do no harm if
she were free, and the nun would not really blame her, if she knew the
truth.

It was not that. It was the secret conviction that there was harm in
the world from which mere courage could not protect her; it was the
sort of instinct that warns young animals not to eat plants that are
poisonous; it was the maiden intuition of a strange and unknown
danger.

She sat down again disconsolately. It was absurd, of course, and she
could not run away. Where could she go? She had no money, and she
would have to starve or beg before one day was out. She would be
homeless, she would be driven to some house of charity, for a meal and
a place to sleep, or else to sleep out under the sky. That would be
delightful for once. She had always longed to sleep out of doors, to
feel the breeze playing with her feathery hair in the dark, to watch
the constellations turning slowly westwards, to listen to the night
sounds, to the low rhythmical piping of the tree toad, the sorrowful
cry of the little southern owl and the tolling of the hour in a far-
off belfry.

But it might rain. At the idea, Sabina laughed again. It would be very
unpleasant to be caught in a shower while napping on a bench in a
public garden. Besides, if the policemen found her there, an extremely
young lady, extremely well dressed but apparently belonging to no one,
they would in all likelihood ask her name, and she would have to tell
them who she was; and then she would be brought back to Baron
Volterra's house, unless they thought it more prudent to take her to a
lunatic asylum.

At that stage in her imaginings it was generally time to go out with
the Baroness for the daily drive, which began with the leaving of
cards and notes, then led to the country or one of the villas, and
generally ended in a turn or two through the Corso before coming home.
The worst part of the daily round was dinner when the Baron was at
home. It was then that she felt most strongly the temptation to slip
out of the house and never to come back. Often, however, he and his
wife dined out, and then Sabina was served alone by two solemn men-
servants, so extremely correct that they reminded her a little of her
old home. These were the pleasantest evenings she spent during that
spring, for when dinner was over she was free to go to her own room
and curl herself up in a big armchair with a book, and read or dream
till bedtime, as she pleased.

When she was alone, her life seemed less objectless, less inexplicably
empty, less stupidly incomprehensible, less lonely than in the company
of those excellent people with whom she had nothing in common, but to
whom she felt that she was under a great obligation. In their company,
it was as if her life had stopped suddenly at the beginning and was
never to go on again, as if she had stuck fast like a fly in a drop of
amber, as if nothing of interest could ever happen to her though she
might live a hundred years.

She could hardly remember anything which had given her great pleasure.
She did not remember to have been ever radiantly happy, though she
could not recall much unhappiness since she had left the convent
school. The last thing that had really hurt her had been the death of
her pet canary, and she had kept her feelings to herself as well as
she could, with the old aristocratic instinct of hiding pain.

It was all idle and strangely empty, and yet hard to understand. She
would have been much surprised if she could have guessed how much its
emptiness interested other people in Rome; how the dowagers chattered
about her over their tea, abusing her mother and all her relations for
abandoning her like a waif; how the men reasoned about Baron
Volterra's deep-laid schemes, trying to make out that his semi-
adoption of Sabina, as they called it, must certainly bode ruin to
some one, since he had never in his life done anything without a
financial object; how the young girls unanimously declared that the
Baroness wanted Sabina for one of her sons, because she was such a
dreadful snob; how Cardinal Della Crusca shook his wise old head
knowingly, as he, who knew so much, always did on the rare occasions
when he knew nothing about the matter in hand; how a romantic young
English secretary of Embassy christened her the Princess in the Tower;
and how old Pompeo Sassi went up to his vineyard on Monte Mario every
Sunday and Thursday and sat almost all the afternoon under the
chestnut-tree thinking about her and making unpractical plans of his
own.





CHAPTER IV




If Baron Volterra did not choose to sell the Palazzo Conti to the
first comer, he doubtless knew his own business best, and he was not
answerable to every one for his opinion that the fine old building was
worth a good deal more than the highest offer he had yet received.
Everybody knew that the palace was for sale, and some of the attempts
made to buy it were openly discussed. A speculator had offered four
hundred thousand francs for it, a rich South American had offered half
a million; it was rumoured that the Vatican would give five hundred
and fifty thousand, provided that the timbers of the carved ceilings
were in good condition, but Volterra steadily refused to allow any of
the carvings to be disturbed in order to examine the beams. During
several days a snuffy little man with a clever face poked about with a
light in dark places between floors, trying to find out whether the
wood were sound or rotten, and asking all sorts of questions of the
old porter, and of two workmen who went with him, and who had been
employed in repairs in the palace, as their fathers had been before
them, perhaps for generations. But their answers were never quite
satisfactory, and the snuffy man disappeared to the mysterious regions
beyond the Tiber, and did not come back.

Some people, knowing the ways of the Romans, might have inferred that
the two workmen, a mason and a carpenter, had not been treated by
Baron Volterra in such a way as to make them give a favourable report;
and as he seemed perfectly indifferent about the result this is quite
possible. At all events the carpenter made out that he could not get
at the beams in question, without moving the decorations which covered
them, and the mason affirmed that it was quite impossible to get a
view of the foundations of the north-west corner of the palace, which
were said to be weak, without knocking a hole through a wall upon
which depended such solidity as there was. It was useless, he said.
The snuffy gentleman could ask the Baron, if he pleased, and the Baron
could do what he liked since the property now belonged to him: but he,
the mason, would not lay hand to pick or crowbar without the Baron's
express authorization. The Baron was a Senator of the Kingdom, said
the mason, and could therefore of course send him to penal servitude
in the galleys for life, if he pleased. That is the average Roman
workman's idea of justice. The snuffy expert, who looked very much
like a poor priest in plain clothes, though he evidently knew his
business, made no reply, nor any attempt to help the mason's
conscience with money.

But he stood a little while by the wall, with his lantern in his
hands, and presently put his ear to the damp stones, and listened.

"There is running water somewhere not far off," he said, looking
keenly at the workman.

"It is certainly not wine," answered the man, with a rough laugh, for
he thought it a very good joke.

"Are there any 'lost waters' under the palace?" asked the expert.

"I do not know," replied the mason, looking away from the lantern
towards the gloom of the cellars.

"I believe," said the snuffy gentleman, setting down his lantern, and
taking a large pinch from a battered silver snuff-box, on which the
arms of Pius Ninth were still distinguishable, "I believe that the
nearest 'lost water' to this place is somewhere under the Vicolo del
Soldati."

"I do not know."

The expert skilfully inserted the brown dust into his nostrils with
his right thumb, scarcely wasting a grain in the operation.

"You do not seem to know much," he observed thoughtfully, and took up
his lantern again.

"I know what I have been taught," replied the mason without
resentment.

The expert glanced at him quickly, but said nothing more. His
inspection was finished, and he led the way out of the intricate
cellars as if he knew them by heart, though he had only passed through
them once, and he left the palace on foot when he had brushed some of
the dust from his shabby clothes.

The porter looked enquiringly at the two men, as they filled little
clay pipes that had cane stems, standing under the deep entrance.

"Not even the price of half a litre of wine," said the mason in answer
to the mute question.

"Church stuff," observed the carpenter discontentedly.

The porter nodded gravely, and the men nodded to him as they went out
into the street. They had nothing more to do that day, and they turned
into the dark little wine shop, where the withered bush stuck out of
the blackened grating. They sat down opposite each other, with the end
of the grimy board of the table between them, and the carpenter made a
sign. The host brought a litre measure of thin red wine and set it
down between them with two tumblers. He was ghastly pale, flabby and
sullen, with a quarter of an inch of stubbly black beard on his
unhealthy face.

The carpenter poured a few drops of wine into one of the tumblers,
shook it about, turned it into the other, shook it again, and finally
poured it on the unctuous stone floor beside him. Then he filled both
glasses to the brim, and both men drank in silence.

They repeated the operation, and after the second glass there was not
much left in the measure. The flabby host had retired to the gloomy
vaults within, where he played cards with a crony by the light of a
small smoking lamp with a cracked chimney.

"That was the very place, was it not?" asked the carpenter at last, in
a low tone, and almost without moving his lips.

The mason said nothing, but shrugged his shoulders, in a sort of
enigmatic assent. Both drank again, and after a long time the
carpenter smiled faintly.

"He was looking for the 'lost water,'" he said, in a tone of contempt.

The faint smile slowly reflected itself in the mason's face. The two
finished their wine, lit their pipes again, left the price of their
drink on the table without disturbing the host and went away.

So far as any outsider could have judged, the expert's curiosity and
the few words exchanged by the workmen referred to the so-called "lost
water," which might be somewhere under the north-west corner of the
Palazzo Conti, and no one unacquainted with subterranean Rome could
possibly have understood what any of the three meant.

The "lost waters" of Rome are very mysterious. Here and there, under
old streets and far down amongst the foundations of ancient palaces,
there are channels of running water which have no apparent connection
with any of the aqueducts now restored and in use. It is a water that
comes no one knows whence and finds its way to the Tiber, no one knows
how. It is generally clear and very cold, and in the days when the
aqueducts were all broken and most people drank of the river, the
"lost water" was highly prized. It appears in the most unexpected
places, sometimes in great quantities and seriously interfering with
any attempt to lay the foundations of a new building, sometimes black
and silent, under a huge flagstone in an old courtyard, sometimes
running with an audible rush through hidden passages deeper than the
deepest cellars. It has puzzled archaeologists, hydraulic engineers
and architects for generations, its presence has never been
satisfactorily explained, there seems not to be any plan of the city
which shows its whereabouts, and the modern improvements of the
Tiber's banks do not appear to have affected its occult courses. By
tradition handed down from father to son, certain workmen, chiefly
masons and always genuine Romans, claim to know more about it than
other people; but that is as much as can be said. It is known as the
"lost water," and it rises and falls, and seeks different levels in
unaccountable ways, as water will when it is confined under the earth
but is here and there confronted by the pressure of the air.

But though the old-fashioned Roman workman still looks upon all
traditional information about his trade as secret and never to be
revealed, that fact alone might seem insufficient to account for the
behaviour of Gigi the carpenter and of Toto the mason under the
particular circumstances here narrated, still less for the contempt
they showed for the snuffy expert who was apparently looking for the
"lost water." An invisible witness would have gathered that they had
something of more importance to conceal. To the expert, their conduct
and answers must have been thoroughly unsatisfactory, for the Vatican
was even said to have refused to pay the additional fifty thousand
francs, On the ground that the state of the foundations was doubtful
and that the timbers of the upper story were not sound.

Baron Volterra's equanimity was not in the least disturbed by this. On
the contrary, instead of setting the price lower, he frankly told all
applicants, through his agent, that he was in no hurry to sell, as he
had reason to believe that the land about the Palazzo Conti would soon
rise in value. He had settled with the representatives of the Conti
family, and it was said that he had behaved generously. The family had
nothing left after the crash, which might partially account for such
an exhibition of generosity; but it was hinted that Baron Volterra had
given them the option of buying back the palace and some other
property upon which he had foreclosed, if they should be able to pay
for it in ten years.

Soon after the visit of the snuffy expert, Volterra's agent informed
the porter that a gentleman had taken the small apartment on the
intermediate story, which had formerly been occupied by a chaplain but
had been disused for years. It had been part of the Conti's folly that
they had steadily refused to let any part of the vast building since
the old Prince's death.


On the following day, the new-comer moved in, with his belongings,
consisting of a small quantity of new furniture, barely sufficient for
himself and his one servant, and a number of very heavy cases, which
turned out to be full of books. Gigi, the carpenter, was at once sent
for to put up plain shelves for these, and he took stock of the lodger
while the latter was explaining what he wanted.

"He is a gentleman," said Gigi to Toto, that very evening, as they
stood filling their pipes at the corner of the Vicolo del Soldati.
"His name is Malipieri. He is as black as the horses at a funeral of
the first-class, and he is not a Roman."

"Who knows what race of animal this may be?" Toto was not in a good
humour.

"He is of the race of gentlemen," asserted Gigi confidently.

"Then he will end badly," observed Toto. "Let us go and drink. It is
better."

"Let us go and drink," repeated Gigi. "You have a sensible thought
sometimes. I think this man is an engineer, or an architect. He wants
a draughtsman's table."

"Evil befall his little dead ones, whatever he is," returned the
other, by way of welcome to the young man who had moved into the
palace.

"He advanced me ten francs to buy wood for the shelves," said Gigi,
who was by far the more cheerful of the two.

"Come and drink," returned Toto, relevantly or irrelevantly. "That is
much better."

So they turned into the wine shop.





CHAPTER V




Baron Volterra introduced Marino Malipieri to the two ladies. The
guest had come punctually, for the Baron had looked at his watch a
moment before he was announced, and it was precisely eight o'clock.

Malipieri bowed to the Baroness, who held out her hand cordially, and
then to Sabina.

"Donna Sabina Conti," said the Baron with extreme distinctness, in
order that his guest should be quite sure of the young girl's
identity.

Sabina looked down modestly, as the nuns had told her to do when a
young man was introduced to her. At the same moment Malipieri's eyes
turned quietly and quickly to the Baron, and a look of intelligence
passed between the two men. Malipieri understood that Sabina was one
of the family in whose former palace he was living. Then he glanced
again at the young girl for one moment, before making a commonplace
remark to the Baroness, and after that Sabina felt that she was at
liberty to look at him.

She saw a very dark man of average height, with short black hair that
grew rather far back from his very white forehead, and wearing a
closely clipped black beard and moustache which did not by any means
hide the firm lines of the mouth and chin. From the strongly marked
eyebrows downward his face was almost of the colour of newly cast
bronze, and the dusky hue contrasted oddly with the clear whiteness of
his forehead. He was evidently a man who had lately been living much
out of doors under a burning sun. Sabina thought that his very bright
black eyes and boldly curved features suggested a young hawk, and he
had a look of compact strength and a way of moving which betrayed both
great energy and extreme quickness.

But there was something more, which Sabina recognized at the first
glance. She felt instantly that he was not like the Baron and his
wife; that he belonged in some way to the same variety of humanity as
herself; that she would understand him when he spoke, that she would
often feel intuitively what he was going to say next, and that he
would understand her.

She listened while he talked to the Baroness. He had a slight Venetian
accent, but his voice had not the soft Venetian ring. It was a little
veiled, and though not at all loud it was somewhat harsh. Sabina did
not dislike the manly tone, though it was not musical, nor the
Venetian pronunciation, although that was unfamiliar. In countries
like Italy and Germany, which have had many centres and many
historical capital cities, almost all educated people speak with the
accents of their several origins, and are rather tenacious of the
habit than anxious to get rid of it, generally maintaining that their
own pronunciation is the right one.

"Signor Malipieri," said the Baron to Sabina, as they went in to
dinner, "is the celebrated archaeologist."

"Yes," Sabina answered, as if she knew all about him, though she had
never heard him mentioned.

Malipieri probably overheard the Baron's speech, but he took no notice
of it. At dinner, he seemed inclined to be silent. The Baron asked him
questions about his discoveries, to which he gave rather short
answers, but Sabina gathered that he had found something extraordinary
in Carthage. She did not know where Carthage was, and did not like to
ask, but she remembered that Marius had sat there among some ruins.
Perhaps Malipieri had found his bones, for no one had ever told her
that Marius did not continue to sit among the ruins to his dying day.
She connected him vaguely with AEneas and another person called
Regulus. It was all rather uncertain.

What she saw clearly was that the Baron wished to make Malipieri feel
at his ease, but that Malipieri's idea of being at his ease was
certainly not founded on a wish to talk about himself. So the
conversation languished for some time.

The Baroness, who knew about as much about Carthage as Sabina, made a
few disconnected remarks, interspersed with laudatory allusions to the
young man's immense learning, for she wished to please her husband,
though she had not the slightest idea why Malipieri was asked to
dinner. Finding that he was not perceptibly flattered by what she
said, she began to talk about the Venetian aristocracy, for she knew
that his name was historical, and she recognized in him at once the
characteristics of the nobility she worshipped. Malipieri smiled
politely, and in answer to a direct question admitted that his mother
had been a Gradenigo.

The Baroness was delighted at this information.

"To think," she said, "that by a mere accident you and Donna Sabina
should meet here, the descendants of two of the oldest families of the
Italian aristocracy!"

"I am a republican," observed Malipieri quietly.

"You!" cried the Baroness in amazement. "You, the offspring of such
races as the Malipieri and the Gradenigo a republican, a socialist, an
anarchist!"

"There is a difference," said Malipieri with a smile. "A republican is
not an anarchist!"

"I can never believe it," answered the Baroness solemnly.

She ate a few green peas and shook her head.

"I went to Carthage because I was condemned to three years'
confinement in prison," replied Malipieri with calm.

"Prison!" exclaimed the Baroness in horror, and she looked at her
husband, mutely asking why in the world he had brought a convict to
their table.

The Baron smiled benignly, as he disposed of an ample mouthful of
green peas, before he spoke.

"Signor Malipieri," he said, when he had swallowed the last one,
"founded and edited a republican newspaper in the north of Italy."

"And you were sent to prison for that?" asked Sabina with indignation.

"It is one thing to send a man to prison," said Malipieri. "It is
another to make him go there. I escaped to Switzerland, and I came
back to Italy quite lately, after the amnesty."

"I am amazed!" The Baroness looked at the servants timidly, as if she
expected the butler and the footman to express their disapprobation of
the guest.

"I have left politics for the present," Malipieri replied, looking at
Sabina and smiling.

"Of course!" cried the Baroness. "But--" she stopped short.

"My wife," said the financier with a grin, "is afraid you have
dynamite about you."

"How absurd!" The Baroness felt that she was ridiculous. "But I do not
understand how you can be friends," she added, glancing from her
husband to Malipieri.

"We are at least on good terms of acquaintance," said the younger man
a little markedly.

Sabina liked the speech and the way in which it was spoken.

"We have a common ground for it in our interest in antiquities. Is it
not true, Signer Malipieri?"

The Baron looked at him and smiled again, as if there were a secret
between them, and Malipieri glanced at Sabina.

"It is quite true," he said gravely. "The Baron has read all I have
written about Carthage."

Volterra possessed a sort of rough social tact, together with the
native astuteness and great knowledge of men which had made him rich
and a Senator. He suddenly became voluble and led the conversation in
a new direction, which it followed till the end of dinner.

Several people came in afterwards, as often happened, before the
coffee was taken away. They were chiefly men in politics, and two of
them brought their wives with them. They were not the sort of guests
whom the Baroness preferred, for they were not by any means all noble
Romans, but they were of importance to her husband and she took great
pains to make them welcome. To one she offered his favourite liqueur,
which happened to be a Sicilian ratafia; for another she made the
Baron send for some of those horribly coarse black cigars known as
Tuscans, which some Italians prefer to anything else; for a third, she
ordered fresh coffee to be especially made. She took endless trouble.

Malipieri seemed to know none of the guests, and he took advantage of
the Baroness's preoccupation for their comforts to sit down by Sabina.
He did not look at her, and she thought he looked bored, as he sat a
moment in silence. Then a thin deputy with a magnificent forehead and
thick grey hair began to hold forth on the subject of a projected
divorce law and the guests gathered round him. Sabina had never heard
of Sydney Smith, but she had a suspicion that nobody could be as great
as the speaker looked. While she was thinking of this, Malipieri spoke
to her in a low voice.

"I suppose that you are stopping in the house," he said.

"Yes."

Sabina turned her eyes a little, but did not look straight at him. She
saw, however, that he was still watching the people in the room, and
still looked bored, and she was quite unprepared for what followed.

"Are the affairs of your family finally settled?" he enquired, without
changing his tone.

Sabina was so much surprised that she waited a moment before
answering. Her first instinct was to ask him stiffly why he put such a
question, and she would have replied to it in that way if it had come
from any other guest in the room; but she changed her mind almost
instantly.

"No one has told me anything," she said simply, in a low voice.
Malipieri turned his head a little with a quick movement, and clasped
his brown hands over one knee.

"You know nothing?" he asked. "Nothing whatever about the matter?"

"Nothing."

He bit his lip as if he were indignant, and were repressing an
exclamation.

"No one has written to me--for a long time," Sabina said, after a
moment.

She had been on the point of saying that she had never received a line
from any member of her family since the crash, but that seemed to
sound like a confidence, and what she really said was quite true.

"Has not the Senator told you anything either?" Malipieri asked.

"No. I suppose he does not like to speak about our misfortunes before
me."

"Have you, I mean you yourself, any interest in the Palazzo Conti now?
Can you tell me that?"

"I know nothing--nothing!" Sabina repeated the word with a slight
tremor, for just then she felt her position more keenly than ever
before. "Why do you ask?"

She could not help putting the question which rose to her lips the
second time, but there was no coldness in her voice. She was very
lonely, and she felt that Malipieri was speaking from some honourable
motive.

"I am living in the palace," Malipieri answered.

Sabina looked up quickly, with an expression of interest in her pale
young face. The thought that the man beside her was living in her old
home was like a bond of acquaintance.

"Really?" she cried. "In which part of the house?"

"Do not seem interested, please," said Malipieri, suddenly looking
very bored again. "If you do, we shall not be allowed to talk. I am
living in the little apartment on the intermediate story. They tell me
that a chaplain once lived there."

"I know where it is," answered Sabina, "but I was never in the rooms.
They used to be shut up, I think."

The deputy who was haranguing on the subject of divorce seemed to be
approaching his peroration. His great voice filled the large room with
incessant noise, and everybody seemed anxiously waiting for a chance
to contradict him. Malipieri was in no danger of being overheard.

"If it happens," he said, "that I wish to communicate with you on a
matter of importance, how can I reach you best?"

He asked the question quite naturally, as if he had known Sabina all
his life. At first she was so much surprised that she could hardly
speak.

"I--I do not know," she stammered.

She had never received letters from any one but her own family or her
school friends, and a very faint colour rose in her pale cheek.
Malipieri looked more bored and weary than ever.

"It may be absolutely necessary for me to write to you before long,"
he said. "Shall I write by post?"

Sabina hesitated.

"Is there no one in all Rome whom you can trust to bring a note and
give it to you when you are alone?"

"There is Signor Sassi," Sabina answered almost instinctively. "But
really, why should you--"

"How can I find Sassi?" asked Malipieri, interrupting the question.
"Who is he?"

"He was our agent. Is he gone? The old porter will know where to find
him. I think he lived near the palace. But perhaps the porter has been
sent away too."

"He is still there. Have you been made to sign any papers since you
have been here?"

"No."

"Will you promise me something?"

Sabina could not understand how it was that a man who had been a
stranger two hours earlier was speaking to her almost as if he were an
intimate friend, still less why she no longer felt that she ought to
check him and assert her dignity.

"If it is right, I will promise it," she answered quietly, and looking
down.

"It is right," he said. "If the Senator, or any one else asks you to
sign a paper, will you promise to consult me before doing so?"

"But I hardly know you!" she laughed, a little shyly.

"It is of no use to waste time and trouble on social conventions,"
said Malipieri. "If you do not trust me, can you trust this Sassi?"

"Oh yes!"

"Then consult him. I will make him consult me, and it will be the
same--and ten times more conventional and proper."

He smiled.

"Will you promise that?" he asked.

"Yes. I promise. But I wish you would tell me more."

"I wish I could. But I hardly know you!" He smiled again, as he
repeated her own words.

"Never mind that! Tell me!"

"No. I cannot. If there is trouble I will tell you everything--through
Sassi, of course."

Sabina laughed, and all at once she felt as if she had known him for
years.

At that moment the deputy finished his speech, and all who had
anything to say in answer said it at once, in order to lose no time,
while the speaker relighted his villainous black cigar, puffing
tremendously.

The Baroness suddenly remembered Sabina and Malipieri in the corner,
and after screaming out several incoherent phrases, which might have
been taken for applause or dissent and were almost lost in the general
din, she moved across the room.

"It is atrocious!" she cried, as she reached Sabina. "I hope you have
not heard a word he said!"

"When a man has such a voice as that, it is impossible not to hear
him," said Malipieri, rising and answering before Sabina had time to
speak.

Sabina rose, too, rather reluctantly.

"And of course you agreed with everything he said," the Baroness
replied. "All anarchists do!"

"I beg your pardon. I do not agree with him at all, and I am really
not an anarchist."

He smiled politely, and Sabina noticed with an unaccountable little
thrill of satisfaction that the smile was quite different from the one
she had seen in his face more than once while they had been talking
together. As for the deputy's discourse, she had not heard a word of
it.

The Baroness sat down on the sofa, and Sabina slipped away. She was
not supposed to be in society yet, as she was not quite eighteen, and
there was certainly no reason why she should stay in the drawing-room
that evening, while there were many reasons why she should go away.
The Baroness breathed an audible sigh of relief when she was gone, for
it was never possible to predict what some excited politician might
say before her in the heat of argument.

In the silence of her own room she sat down to think over the
unexpected events of the evening. Very young girls love to look
forward to the moment when they shall be able to "think" of what has
happened, after they have met men they are inclined to like, and who
interest them. But when the time really comes they hardly ever think
at all. They see pictures, they hear voices, they feel again what they
have felt, they laugh, they shed tears all alone, and they believe
they are thinking, or even reasoning. Their little joys come back to
them, the little triumphs of their vanity, and also all the little
hurts their sensitiveness has suffered, and which men do not often
guess and still more rarely understand.

There must be some original reason why all boys call girls silly, and
all girls think boys stupid. It must be part of the first
manifestation of that enormous difference which exists between the
point of view of men and women in after life.

Women are, in a sense, the embodiment of practice, while men are the
representatives of theory. In practice, in a race for life, the runner
who jumps everything in his way is always right, unless he breaks his
neck. In theory, he is as likely to break his neck at the first jump
as at the second, and the chances of his coming to grief increase
quickly, always in theory, as he grows tired. So theory says that it
is safer never to jump at all, but to go round through the gates, or
wade ignominiously through the water. Women jump; men go round. The
difference is everything. Women believe in what often succeeds in
practice, and they take all risks and sometimes come down with a
crash. Men theorize about danger, make elaborate calculations to avoid
it and occasionally stick in the mud. When women fall at a stone wall
they scream, when men are stuck in a bog they swear. The difference is
fundamental. In nine cases out of ten it is the woman who enjoys the
ecstatic delight of saying "I told you so," and there are plenty of
women who would ask no greater joy in paradise than to say so to their
husbands for ever and ever. Indeed, eternal reward and punishment
could thus be at once combined and distributed in a simple manner.

Sabina took her first fence that evening, for when she put out her
candle she was sure that Malipieri was already her friend, and that
she could trust him in any emergency. Moreover, though she would not
have acknowledged it, she inwardly hoped that some emergency might not
be far in the future.

But Malipieri walked all the way from the Via Ludovisi to the Palazzo
Conti, which is more than a mile, without noticing that he had
forgotten to light the cigar he had taken out on leaving Volterra's
house.





CHAPTER VI




Malipieri had the Palazzo Conti to himself. The main entrance was
always shut now, and only a small postern, cut in one side of the
great door, was left ajar. The porter loafed about in the great court
with his broom and his pipe; in the morning his wife went upstairs and
opened a few windows, merely as a formality, and late in the afternoon
she shut them again. Malipieri's man generally went out twice every
day, carrying a military dinner-pail, made in three sections, which he
brought back half an hour later. Malipieri sometimes was not seen for
several days, but frequently he went out in the morning and did not
come back till dark. Now and then, things were delivered for him at
the door,--a tin of oil for his lamps, a large box of candles,
packages of odd shapes, sometimes very heavy, and which the porter was
told to handle with care.

The old man tried to make acquaintance with Malipieri's man, but found
it less easy than he had expected. In the first place, Masin came from
some outlandish part of Italy where an abominable dialect was spoken,
and though he could speak school Italian when he pleased, he chose to
talk to the porter in his native jargon, when he talked at all. He
might just as well have spoken Greek. Secondly, he refused the
porter's repeated offers of a litre at the wine shop, always saying
something which sounded like a reference to his delicate health. As he
was evidently as strong as an ox, and as healthy as a savage or a
street dog, the excuse carried no conviction. He was a big, quiet
fellow, with china-blue eyes and a reddish moustache. The porter was
not used to such people, nor to servants who wore moustaches, and was
inclined to distrust the man. On the other hand, though Masin would
not drink, he often gave the porter a cigar, with a friendly smile.

One day, in the morning, Baron Volterra came to see Malipieri, and
stayed over an hour, a part of which time the two men spent in the
courtyard, walking up and down in the north-west corner, and then
taking some measurements with a long tape which Malipieri produced
from his pocket. When the Baron went away he stopped and spoke with
the porter. First he gave him five francs; then he informed him that
his wages would be raised in future by that amount; and finally he
told him that Signor Malipieri was an architect and would superintend
the repairs necessary to the foundations at the north-west corner,
that while the work was going on even the little postern door was to
be kept shut all day, and no one was to be admitted on any condition
without Signor Malipieri's express permission. The fat Baron fixed his
eyes on the porter's with an oddly hard look, and said that he himself
might come at any moment to see how the work was going on, and that if
he found anybody inside the gate without Signor Malipieri's authority,
it would be bad for the porter. During this conversation, Malipieri
stood listening, and when it ended he nodded, as if he were satisfied,
and after shaking hands with the Baron he went up the grand staircase
without a word.

It was all very mysterious, and the porter shook his head as he turned
into his lodge after fastening the postern; but he said nothing to his
wife about what had passed.

From what he had been told, he now naturally expected that a number of
masons would come in a day or two in order to begin the work of
strengthening the foundations; but no one came, and everything went on
as usual, except that the postern was kept shut. He supposed that
Malipieri was not ready, but he wisely abstained from asking
questions. Then Malipieri asked him for the address of Pompeo Sassi,
and wrote it down in his pocket-book, and went out. That was on the
morning after he had dined at the Baron's house, for it was not his
habit to waste time when he wanted information.

Sassi received Malipieri in a little sitting-room furnished with a
heterogeneous collection of utterly useless objects, all of which the
old agent treasured with jealous affection, and daily recommended to
the care of the elderly woman who was his only servant. The sofa and
chairs had been new forty years ago, and though the hideous red-and-
green stuffs with which they were covered were still tolerably vivid
in colours the legs did not look safe, and Malipieri kept his feet
well under him and sat down cautiously. Two rickety but well-dusted
tables were loaded with ancient nicknacks, dating from the early part
of the second French Empire, with impossibly ugly little figures
carved out of cheap alabaster, small decayed photograph albums, and
ingeniously bad wax flowers under glass shades. On the walls hung bad
lithographs of Pius Ninth, Napoleon Third and Metternich, with a large
faded photograph of old Prince Conti as a young man. Malipieri looked
at it curiously, for he guessed that it represented Sabina's father.
The face was clean-shaven, thin and sad, with deep eyes and fair hair
that looked almost white now, as if the photograph had grown old with
the man, while he had lived.

Sassi sat down opposite his visitor. He wore a black cloth cap with a
green tassel, and rubbed his hands slowly while he waited for
Malipieri to speak. The latter hesitated a moment and then went to the
point at once.

"You were the agent of the Conti estate for many years," he said. "I
know the Senator Volterra and have met Donna Sabina. I understand that
her mother has left her under the charge of the Senator's wife, and
seems to have forgotten her existence. The young lady is apparently
without resources of her own, and it is not clear what would become of
her if the Volterra couple should not find it convenient to keep her
with them. Is that the state of affairs?"

Sassi nodded gravely. Then he looked keenly at the young man, and
asked him a question.

"May I enquire why you take an interest in Donna Sabina Conti?"

Malipieri returned the other's gaze quietly.

"I am an architect, called in by the Senator to superintend some work
on the palace. The Senator, as you know, took over the building when
he foreclosed the mortgage, and he has not yet sold it, though he has
refused several good offers. I have an idea that he believes it to be
very valuable property. If this should turn out to be true, and if he
should have made a very profitable transaction, he ought in honour, if
not in law, to make over a part of the profits to Donna Sabina, who
has practically been cheated of her share in her father's estate. Her
mother, and her brother and sister, spent everything they could lay
hands on, whereas she never had anything. Is that true?"

"Quite true, quite true," repeated Sassi sadly.

"And if Donna Sabina were to call them to account, I fancy the law
would take a rather unpleasant view of what they did. I have heard
that sort of thing called stealing when the persons who did it were
not princes and princesses, but plain people like you and me. Do you
happen to think of any better word?"

Sassi was silent. He had eaten the bread of the Conti all his life. He
glanced at the faded photograph of the Prince, as if to explain, and
Malipieri understood.

"You are an honorable man," he said. "I can no more tell you why I
wish to help Donna Sabina to her rights, if she has any, than I can
explain a great many things I have done in my life. When I see a dog
kicked, I always kick the man, if I can, and I do not remember to have
regretted any momentary unpleasantness that has followed in such
cases. I have only seen Donna Sabina once, but I mean to help her if
possible. Now tell me this. Has she any legal claim in the value of
the palace or not?"

"I am afraid not," Sassi answered.

"Do you know whether she was ever induced to sign any release of her
guardians?"

"She never did."

"That might be bad for them. That is all I wished to know. Thank you."

Malipieri rose to take his leave.

"If anything of importance happens, can you communicate with Donna
Sabina?" he asked.

"I can write to her," Sassi answered. "I suppose she would receive me
if I went to the house."

"That would be better."

"Excuse me," said the old man, before opening the door to let his
visitor out, "am I right in supposing that the work the Baron wishes
done is connected with the foundations?"

"Yes."

"At the north-west corner within the courtyard?"

"Yes," answered Malipieri, looking at him attentively. "Do you happen
to know anything about the condition of that part of the palace?"

"Most people," Sassi replied, "have now forgotten that a good deal of
work was done there long ago, under Pope Gregory Sixteenth."

"Indeed? I did not know that. What was the result?"

"The workmen came across the 'lost water.' It rose suddenly one day
and one of them was drowned. I believe his body was never recovered.
Everything was filled in again after that. For my own part I do not
think the building is in any danger."

"Perhaps not," said Malipieri, suddenly looking bored. "I only carry
out the Senator's wishes," he added, as if with an afterthought. "It
is my business to find out whether there is danger or not."

He took his leave and went away, convinced that the old agent knew
about other things besides Sabina's friendless condition, but
unwilling to question him just then. The information Sassi had
volunteered was interesting but not useful. Malipieri thought he
himself knew well enough where the "lost water" was, under the Palazzo
Conti.

It was not far from Sassi's house to the palace, but he walked very
slowly through the narrow streets, and stopped more than once,
deliberately looking back, as if he were trying to keep the exact
direction of some point in his mind, and he seemed interested in the
gutters, and in the walls, at their base, just above the pavement. At
the corner of the Vicolo dei Soldati he saw a little marble tablet let
into the masonry and yellow with age. He stopped a moment and read the
inscription. Then he turned away with a look of annoyance, for it set
forth that "by order of the most Eminent Vicar all persons were warned
not to empty garbage there, on pain of a fine." It was a forgotten
document of the old papal administration, as he could have told
without reading it if he had known Rome better. From the corner he
counted his paces and then stopped again and examined the wall and the
pavement minutely.

There was nothing to be seen at all different from the pavement and
the wall for many yards further on and further back, and Malipieri
apparently abandoned the search, for he now walked on quickly till he
reached the entrance of the palace, on the other side, and went in.

From the low door of the wine shop, Toto, the mason, had seen him, and
stood watching him till he was out of sight.

"He does not know where it is," Toto said, sitting down again opposite
Gigi.

"Engineers know everything," retorted the carpenter.

"If this one knew anything, he would not have stood there looking at
the stones. I do not suppose the municipality is going to put up a
monument to my grandfather, whom may the Lord preserve in glory!"

At this Gigi laughed, for he knew that Toto's grandfather had been
drowned in the "lost water" somewhere deep down under that spot, and
had never been found. The two men drank in silence. After a long time
Toto spoke again.

"A woman," he said, with a shrug of the shoulders.

"A woman drowned him?" asked Gigi. "How could a woman do it?"

"A man did it. But it was for jealousy of a woman."

"The man was a mason, I suppose," suggested Gigi.

"Of course. He was working with the others in the morning, and he knew
where they would be after dinner. He did not come back with them, and
half an hour after they had gone down the water came. How many times
have I told you that?"

"It is always a new tale," answered Gigi. "It gives me pleasure to
hear it. Your father was a young man then, was he not?"

"Eighteen." Toto lighted his pipe.

"And the man who did it died soon afterwards?" Gigi said.

"Of course," said Toto. "What else could my father do? He killed him.
It was the least he could have done. My father is also in Paradise."

"Requiescat!" ejaculated the carpenter devoutly.

"Amen," answered Toto. "He killed him with a mattock."

"It was well done," observed Gigi with satisfaction. "I suppose," he
continued after a pause, "that if anybody went down there now, you
could let in the water."

"Why should I? I do not care what they do. If they send for me, I may
serve them. If they think they can do without me, let them try. I do
not care a cabbage!"

"Perhaps not," Gigi answered thoughtfully. "But it must be a fine
satisfaction to know that you can drown them all, like rats in a
hole."

"Yes," said Toto, "it is a fine satisfaction."

"And even to know that you can make the water come before they begin,
so that they can never do anything without you."

"That too," assented the mason.

"They would pay you a great deal to help them, if they could not pump
the water out. There is no one else in Rome who knows how to turn it
off."

Gigi made the remark tentatively, but Toto did not answer.

"You will need some one to help you," suggested the carpenter in an
insinuating tone.

"I can do it alone."

"It is somewhere in the cellars of number thirteen, is it not?" asked
Gigi.

He would have given all he had to know what Toto knew, and the bargain
would have been a very profitable one, no doubt. But though the mason
was his closest friend there were secrets of the trade which Toto
would not reveal to him.

"The numbers in the street were all changed ten years ago," Toto
answered.

He rose from his seat by the grimy table, and Gigi followed his
example with a sigh of disappointment. They were moderate men, and
hardly ever drank more than their litre of their wine. Toto smelt of
mortar and his fustian clothes and hairy arms were generally splashed
with it. Gigi smelt of glue and sawdust, and there were plentiful
marks of his calling on his shiny old cloth trousers and his coarse
linen shirt. Toto's face was square, stony and impenetrable; Gigi's
was sharp as a bill and alive with curiosity. Gigi wore a square paper
cap; Toto wore a battered felt hat of no shape at all. On Sundays and
holidays they both shaved and turned out in immaculate white shirts,
well brushed broadcloth and decent hats, recognizable to each other
but not to their employers.

Malipieri was accosted by a stranger at the gate of the palace. The
porter, faithfully obedient to his orders, was standing inside the
open postern, completely blocking it with his bulk, and when Malipieri
came up the visitor was still parleying with him.

"This gentleman is asking for you, sir," said the old man.

The individual bowed politely and stepped back a little. He had a
singularly worthy appearance, Malipieri thought, and he would have
inspired confidence if employed in a bank; his thick grey hair was
parted in the middle, and at first sight Malipieri felt perfectly sure
that it was parted down the back. His brown eyes were very wide open,
and steady, his slightly grizzled moustache was neither twisted
straight up at the ends in the imperial German manner, nor straight
out like a cat's whiskers, nor waxed to fine points in the old French
fashion. It grew naturally and was rather short, but it hid his mouth
almost completely. The man was extremely well dressed in half-
mourning, wore dark grey gloves and carried a plain black stick. He
spoke quietly and Malipieri thought he recognized the Genoese accent.

"Signor Marino Malipieri?"

"Yes," answered the architect, in a tone that asked the visitor's name
in return.

"My name is Vittorio Bruni. May I have a few words with you?"

"Certainly," Malipieri answered, with considerable coolness.

"Thank you. I have been much interested by your discoveries in
Carthage, and if you would allow me to ask you one or two questions--"

"Pray come in."

"Thanks. After you."

"After you," insisted Malipieri, standing aside.

They went in. Before shutting the postern, the porter looked out into
the street. It was almost deserted. Two men were standing together
near the corner, apparently arguing some question, and stopping in
their walk in order to talk more at their ease, as Romans often do.
The porter shut the little door with a clang, and went back to his
lodge. Malipieri and his visitor were already on the stairs.

Malipieri let himself in with a small latch-key, for he had ordered a
modern patent lock to be put on his door as soon as he moved into the
house. Masin appeared almost at once, however, and stood waiting for
his master at the door of the sitting-room, like a large, placid
mastiff. Malipieri nodded to him, and went in with Signor Bruni.

They sat down by the open window and Signor Bruni began to talk. In a
few minutes it became evident that whether the man knew anything of
the subject or not he had read everything that Malipieri had written,
and remembered most of it by heart. He spoke fluently and asked
intelligent questions. He had never been to Carthage, he said, but he
thought of making the trip to Tunis during the following winter. Yes,
he was a man of leisure, though he had formerly been in business; he
had a taste for archaeology, and did not think it was too late to
cultivate it, in a modest way, for his own pleasure. Of course, he
could never hope to accomplish anything of importance, still less to
become famous like Malipieri. It was merely a taste, and was better
than nothing as an interest in life.

Malipieri protested that he was not famous, but agreed with Signor
Bruni about other matters. It was better to follow a serious pursuit
than to do nothing with one's life.

"Or to dash into politics," suggested Bruni carelessly, as if he had
thought of trying that.

Perhaps he had heard of Malipieri's republican newspaper, but if he
had thought of drawing the young man into conversation about it, he
was disappointed. Malipieri continued to agree with him, listening
attentively to all he said without once looking bored.

"And now," continued Bruni presently, "if it is not indiscreet, may I
ask whether you have any new field of discovery in view?"

The phrases ran along as if they had been all prepared beforehand. The
accent was now decidedly Genoese, and Malipieri, who was a Venetian,
disliked it.

"Not at present," he said. "I have undertaken a little professional
work in Rome, and I am trying to learn more about the Phoenician
language."

"That is beyond me!" Bruni smiled pleasantly.

Malipieri looked at him a moment.

"If you are going to look into Carthaginian antiquities," he said,
with much gravity, "I strongly advise you to study Phoenician."

"Dear me!" exclaimed Bruni with a sigh of regret, "I had hoped it
might not be necessary."

He rose to take his leave, but as if seeing the bookshelves for the
first time, asked permission to look at their contents. Malipieri saw
that his glance ran sharply along the titles of the volumes, and that
he was reading them as quickly as he could.

"I suppose you live here quite alone," he said.

"Yes. I have a servant."

"Of course. They tell me that Baron Volterra has not decided what he
will do with the palace, and will not give a lease of it to any one."

"I do not know what he means to do," answered Malipieri, looking at
the straight part down the back of his worthy visitor's hair, as the
latter bent to look at the books.

"I suppose he lends you this apartment, as a friend," said Bruni.

"No. I pay rent for it."

Signor Bruni was becoming distinctly inquisitive, thought Malipieri,
who answered coldly. Possibly the visitor perceived the hint, for he
now finally took his leave. In spite of his protestations Malipieri
went all the way downstairs with him, and let him out himself, just as
the porter came out of his lodge at the sound of their footsteps.

Signor Bruni bowed a last time, and then walked briskly away. By force
of habit, the porter looked up and down the street before shutting the
door after him, and he was somewhat surprised to see that the two men
whom he had noticed half an hour earlier had only just finished their
argument and turned to go on as Signor Bruni passed them. Then the
porter watched them all three till they disappeared round the corner.
At the same moment, from the opposite direction, Toto reached the door
of the palace, and greeted the porter with a rough good-evening.

"I have forgotten the name of this palace," he added, by way of a
joke, meaning that he had not been called to do any work for a long
time. "Perhaps you can tell me what it is called."

"It used to be a madhouse," returned the porter in the same strain.
"Now that the madmen are gone, a mole lives here. I kept the door open
for the lunatics, and they all got out. I keep it shut for the mole,
when he does not shut it himself."

"I will come in and smoke a pipe with you," said Toto. "We will talk
of old times."

The porter shook his head, and blocked the way.

"Not if you were the blessed soul of my father come back from the
dead," he said. "The Baron's instructions are to let no one in without
the mole's orders."

"But I am an old friend," objected Toto.

"Not if you were my mother, and the Holy Father, and Saint Peter, and
all the souls of Purgatory at once," answered the porter.

"May an apoplexy seize you!" observed Toto pleasantly, and he went
off, his pipe in his mouth.

The porter shrugged his shoulders at the imprecation, shut the door
reluctantly, and went in to supper. Upstairs, Malipieri stood at his
open window, smoking and watching the old fountain in the court. It
was evening, and a deep violet light filled the air and was reflected
in the young man's bronzed face. He was very thoughtful now, and was
not aware that he heard the irregular splash of the water in the dark
basin at the feet of the statue of Hercules, and the eager little
scream of the swallows as they shot past him, upward to the high old
eaves, where their young were, and downwards almost to the gravel of
the court, and in wide circles and madly sudden curves. The violet
light faded softly, and the dusk drank the last drop of it, and the
last swallow disappeared under the eaves; but still Malipieri leaned
upon the stone window-sill, looking down.

For a long time he thought of Signor Bruni. He wondered whether he had
ever seen the man before, or whether the face only seemed familiar
because it was the type of a class of faces all more or less alike,
all intensely respectable and not without refinement, expressing a
grave reticence that did not agree with the fluent speech, and a
polite reserve at odds with the inquisitive nature that revealed
itself.

Malipieri was inclined to think he had never met Bruni, but somehow
the latter recalled the hot times in Milan, and his short political
career, and the association was not to the man's advantage. He could
not recall the name at all. It was like any other, and rather
especially unobtrusive. Anybody might be called Vittorio Bruni, and
Vittorio Bruni might be anybody, from a senator to a shoemaker; but if
he had been a senator, or any political personage, Malipieri would
have heard of him.

There was something very odd, too, about his knowledge of Carthaginian
antiquities, which was entirely limited to the contents of Malipieri's
own pamphlets. He knew nothing of the Egyptians and very little about
the Greeks, beyond what Malipieri had necessarily written about both.
He had talked much as a man does who has read up an unfamiliar subject
in order to make a speech about it, and though the speech is skilful,
an expert can easily detect the shallowness of attainment behind it.

There could be only one reason why any one should take so much
trouble; the object was evidently to make Malipieri's acquaintance, in
the absence of an ordinary introduction. And yet Signor Bruni had
quite forgotten to give his card with his address, as almost any
Italian would have done under the circumstances, whether he expected
the meeting to be followed by another or not. Malipieri spent most of
his time in his rooms, but he knew very well that he might go about
Rome for weeks and not come across the man again.

He recalled the whole conversation. He had in the first place expected
that Bruni would be inquisitive about the palace, and perhaps ask to
be shown over it, but it was only at the last that he had put one or
two questions which suggested an interest in the building, and then he
had at once taken the hint given him by Malipieri's cold tone, and had
not persisted. On the other hand he had looked carefully at the titles
of the books on the shelves, as if in search of something.

Then Malipieri was conscious again of the association, in his own
mind, between the man's personality and his own political experiences,
and he suddenly laughed aloud.

"What a precious fool I am!" he thought. "The man is nothing but a
detective!"

The echo of his laugh came back to him from across the dusky court in
rather a ghostly way.

The evening air was all at once chilly, and he shut his window and
called for Masin, who instantly appeared with a lamp. Masin was always
ready, and, indeed, possessed many qualities excellent in a faithful
servant, among which gratitude to Malipieri held a high place.

He had something to be grateful for, which is not, however, always a
cause of gratitude in the receiver of favours and mercies. He had been
a convict, and had served a term of several years in penal servitude.
The sentence had been passed upon him for having stabbed a man in the
back, in a drunken brawl, but Masin had steadily denied the charge,
and the evidence against him had been merely circumstantial. It had
happened in Rome, where Masin had worked as a mason during the
construction of the new Courts of Justice. He was from the far north
of Italy, and was, of course, hated by his companions, as only
Italians of different parts of the country can hate one another. To
shield one of themselves, they unanimously gave evidence against
Masin; the jury was chiefly composed of Romans, the judge was a
Sicilian, and Masin had no chance. Fortunately for him, the man lived,
though much injured; if he had died, Masin would have got a life
sentence. It was an old story; false witnesses, a prejudiced jury, and
a judge who, though willing to put his prejudices aside, had little
choice but to convict.

Masin had been sent to Elba to the penitentiary, had been a "good-
behaviour man" from first to last, and his term had been slightly
abridged in consequence. When he was discharged, he went back to the
north. Malipieri had found him working as a mason when some repairs
were being made in the cathedral of Milan, and had taken a fancy to
him. Masin had told his story simply and frankly, explaining that he
found it hard to get a living at all since he had been a convict, and
that he was trying to save enough money to emigrate to New York.
Malipieri had thought over the matter for a week, speaking to him now
and then, and watching him, and had at last proposed to take him into
his own service. Later, Masin had helped Malipieri to escape, had
followed him into exile, and had been of the greatest use to him
during the excavations in Carthage, where he had acted as body-
servant, foreman, and often as a trusted friend.

He was certainly not an accomplished valet, but Malipieri did not care
for that. He was sober, he was honest, he was trustworthy, he was cool
in danger, and he was very strong. Moreover, he was an excellent and
experienced mason, a fact of little or no use in the scientific
treatment of shoes, trousers, silk hats, hair-brushes and coffee, but
which had more than once been valuable to Malipieri during the last
few years. Finally, his gratitude to the man who had believed in his
innocence was deep and lasting. Masin would really have given his life
to save Malipieri's, and would have been glad to give it.

He set the lamp down on the table, and waited for orders, his blue
eyes quietly fixed on his master.

"I never saw that gentleman before," said Malipieri, setting some
papers in order, under the bright light, but still standing. "Did you
look at his face?"

"Yes, sir," answered Masin, and waited.

"What sort of man should you take him to be?"

"A spy, sir," replied Masin promptly.

"I think you are right," Malipieri answered. "We will begin work to-
morrow morning."

"Yes, sir."

Malipieri ate his supper without noticing what Masin brought him, and
then installed himself with his shaded lamp at his work-table. He took
from the drawer a number of sketches of plans and studied them
attentively, by a rather odd process.

He had drawn only one plan on heavy paper, in strong black lines. An
architect would have seen at once that it represented a part of the
foundations of a very large building; and two or three persons then
living in Rome might have recognized the plan of the cellars under the
north-west corner of the Palazzo Conti--certainly not more than two or
three, one of whom was the snuffy expert who had come from beyond the
Tiber, and another was Baron Volterra. Toto, the mason, could have
threaded the intricate ways in the dark, but could assuredly have made
nothing of the drawings. On the other hand, the persons who were
acquainted with them did not know what Toto knew, and he was not at
all inclined to impart his knowledge to any one, for reasons best
known to himself.

Furthermore, an architect would have understood at a glance that the
plan was incomplete, and that there was some reason why it could not
be completed. A part of it was quite blank, but in one place the
probable continuation of a main wall not explored, or altogether
inaccessible, was indicated by dotted lines.

Besides this main drawing, Malipieri had several others made on
tracing paper to the same scale, which he laid over the first, and
moved about, trying to make the one fit the other, and in each of
these the part which was blank in the one underneath was filled in
according to different imaginary plans. Lastly, he had a large
transparent sheet on which were accurately laid out the walls and
doors of the ground floor of the palace at the north-west corner, and
in this there was marked a square piece of masonry, shaded as if to
represent a solid pilaster, and which came over the unexplored part of
the cellars. Sometimes Malipieri placed this drawing over the first,
and then one of the others on both, trying to make the three agree. It
was like an odd puzzle, and there was not a word written on any of the
plans to explain what they meant. On most of the thin ones there were
blue lines, indicating water, or at least its possible course.

The imaginary architect, if he could have watched the real one, would
have understood before long that the latter was theorizing about the
probable construction of what was hitherto inaccessible, and about the
probable position of certain channels through which water flowed, or
might be expected to flow. He would also have gathered that Malipieri
could reach no definite conclusion unless he could break through one
of two walls in the cellar, or descend through an opening in the floor
above, which would be by far the easiest way. He might even have
wondered why Malipieri did not at once adopt the latter expedient. It
is not a serious matter to make an aperture through a vault, large
enough to allow the passage of a man's body, and it could not be
attended with any danger to the building. It would be much less safe
and far more difficult to cut a hole through one of the main
foundation walls, which might be ma