bold perspective painted in the vaults and embrasures, were almost
obliterated by time, and in which such furniture as there was could not
survive much longer. About one-half of the state apartment, comprising,
perhaps, fifteen or twenty rooms, large and small, had been occupied by
Donna Francesca and her husband, and she now lived in them alone. In
that part of the palace there was a sort of quiet and stately luxury,
the result of her own taste, which was strongly opposed to the gaudy
fashions then introduced from Paris at the height of the Second Empire's
importance. Girolamo Campodonico had been aware that his young wife's
judgment was far better than his own in artistic matters, and had left
all such questions entirely to her.

She had taken much pleasure in unearthing from attics and disused rooms
all such objects as possessed any intrinsic artistic value, such as old
carved furniture, tapestries, and the like. Whatever she found worth
keeping she had caused to be restored just so far as to be useful, and
she had known how to supply the deficiencies with modern material in
such a way as not to destroy the harmony of the whole.

It should be sufficiently clear from these facts that Donna Francesca
Campodonico was a woman of taste and culture, in the modern sense.
Indeed, the satisfaction of her tastes occupied a much more important
place in her existence than her social obligations, and had a far
greater influence upon her subsequent life. Her favourite scheme was to
make her palace at all points as complete within as its architect had
made it outside, and she had it in her power to succeed in doing so. She
was not, as some might think, a great exception in those days. Within
the narrow limits of a certain class, in which the hereditary
possession of masterpieces has established artistic intelligence as a
stamp of caste, no people, until recently, have had a better taste than
the Italians; as no people, beyond these limits, have ever had a worse.
There was nothing very unusual in Donna Francesca's views, except her
constant and industrious energy in carrying them out. Even this might be
attributed to the fact that she had inherited a beautiful but
dilapidated palace, which she was desirous of improving until, on a
small scale, it should be like the houses of the great old families,
such as the Saracinesca, the Savelli, the Frangipani, and her own near
relatives, the Princes of Gerano.

She had an invaluable ally