ne as Pio
Nono, Garibaldi, the French military occupation, the hatred of the
Jesuits, and all that made the revival of Italy in the nineteenth
century the most thrilling romance that ever roused Italian passion
and stirred the world's sympathy. Durand was not old enough to
remember those times, and he had never been in Rome at all till he was
nearly thirty years of age and on the first wave of his high success;
but he had read about the past, and to his unspoiled sight and vivid
imagination Rome was still romantic and the greatest city in the
world, ancient or modern; and somehow when he thought of his picture
and of Angela's face, and remembered the scene at the telephone, he
felt that he was himself just within the sphere of some mysterious and
tragic action which he could not yet understand, but which might
possibly affect his own life.

'This is a serio-comic world,' he said to himself as he slowly made
his way down the Corso, watching the faces of the people he passed,
because he never passed a face in the street without glancing at it,
stopping now and then to look into a shop window where there was
nothing to see that he had not seen a thousand times elsewhere,
smoking cigarettes without number, thinking of Angela's portrait, and
mechanically repeating his little epigram over and over again, to a
sort of tune in his head, with variations and transpositions that
meant nothing at all.

'This is a serio-comic world. This is a comico-serious world. This
world is a serious comico-serial. This is a worldly-serious comedy.'
And so forth, and so on; and a number of more or less good-looking
women of the serio-comic world, whose portraits he had painted, and
several more or less distinguished men who had sat to him, passed the
man of genius and greeted him as if they were rather pleased to show
that they knew him; but they would have been shocked if they could
have heard the silly words the great painter was mechanically
repeating to himself as he idled along the pavement, musing on the
picture he hoped to keep, and already regarded as his masterpiece and
chief treasure.

CHAPTER II

The excellent Madame Bernard had been Angela's governess before the
child had been sent to the convent, on the Trinita dei Monti, and
whenever she was at home for the holidays, and also during the brief
interval between her leaving school and going into society; and after
that, during the winter which preceded Prince Chiaromonte