t subject. Rest assured, Gorka is in love with his
charming wife, and he could not make a better choice. Countess Caterina
is an excellent person, very Italian. She is interested in him, as in
you, as in Maitland, as in me; in you because you write such admirable
books, in Maitland because he paints like our best masters, in Boleslas
on account of the sorrow he had in the death of his first child, in me
because I have so delicate a charge. She is more than an excellent
person, she is a truly superior woman, very superior." He uttered his
hypocritical speech with such perfect ease that Dorsenne was surprised
and irritated. That Hafner did not believe one treacherous word of what
he said the novelist was sure, he who, from the indiscreet confidences of
Gorka, knew what to think of the Venetian's manner, and he; too,
understood the Baron's glance! At any other time he would have admired
the policy of the old stager. At that moment the novelist was vexed by
it, for it caused him to play a role, very common but not very elevating,
that of a calumniator, who has spoken ill of a woman with whom he dined
the day before. He, therefore, quickened his pace as much as politeness
would permit, in order not to remain tete-a-tete with the Baron, and also
to rejoin the persons of their party already arrived.

They emerged from the first room to enter a second, marked "Porcelain;"
then a third, "Frescoes of Perino del Vaga," on account of the ceiling
upon which the master painted a companion to his vigorous piece at
Genoa--"Jupiter crushing the Giants"--and, lastly, into a fourth, called
"The Arazzi," from the wonderful panels with which it was decorated.

A few visitors were lounging there, for the season was somewhat advanced,
and the date which M. Ancona had chosen for the execution proved either
the calculation of profound hatred or else the adroit ruse of a syndicate
of retailers. All the magnificent objects in the palace were adjudged at
half the value they would have brought a few months sooner or later. The
small group of curios stood out in contrast to the profusion of
furniture, materials, objects of art of all kinds, which filled the vast
rooms. It was the residence of five hundred years of power and of luxury,
where masterpieces, worthy of the great Medicis, and executed in their
time, alternated with the gewgaws of the eighteenth century and bronzes
of the First Empire, with silver trinkets ordered but yesterday in
London.