mistress of the house applies herself to
realizing an ideal of Parisian luxury. He had amused himself many an
evening in separating from the almost international framework local
features, those which distinguished the room from others of the same
kind. No human being succeeds in being absolutely factitious in his home
or in his writings. The author had thus noted that the salon bore a date,
that of the Countess's last journey to Paris in 1880. It was to be seen
in the plush and silk of the curtains. The general coloring, in which
green predominated, a liberty egotistical in so brilliant a blonde, had
too warm a tone and betrayed the Italian. Italy was also to be found in
the painted ceiling and in the frieze which ran all around, as well as in
several paintings scattered about. There were two panels by Moretti de
Brescia in the second style of the master, called his silvery manner, on
account of the delicate and transparent fluidity of the coloring; a
'Souper chez le Pharisien' and a 'Jesus ressuscite sur le rivage', which
could only have come from one of the very old palaces of a very ancient
family. Dorsenne knew all that, and he knew, too, for what reasons he
found almost empty at that time of the year the hall so animated during
the entire winter, the hall through which he had seen pass a veritable
carnival of visitors: great lords, artists, political men, Russians and
Austrians, English and French--pellmell. The Countess was far from
occupying in Rome the social position which her intelligence, her fortune
and her name should have assured her. For, having been born a Navagero,
she combined on her escutcheon the cross of gold of the Sebastien
Navagero who was the first to mount the walls of Lepante, with the star
of the grand Doge Michel.

But one particular trait of character had always prevented her from
succeeding on that point. She could not bear ennui nor constraint, nor
had she any vanity. She was positive and impassioned, in the manner of
the men of wealth to whom their meditated--upon combinations serve to
assure the conditions of their pleasures. Never had Madame Steno
displayed diplomacy in the changes of her passions, and they had been
numerous before the arrival of Gorka, to whom she had remained faithful
two years, an almost incomprehensible thing! Never had she, save in her
own home, observed the slightest bounds when there was a question of
reaching the object of her desire. Moreover, she had not in R