ng-room. She was thinking mournfully of her husband. I
said to her: 'Do you wish me to think of your husband, too? I will think
of him with you. I have been told that he was a learned man, a member of
the Royal Society of Paris. Madame Marmet, talk to me of him.' She
replied that he had devoted himself to the Etruscans, and that he had
given to them his entire life. Oh, darling, I cherished at once the
memory of that Monsieur Marmet, who lived for the Etruscans. And then a
good idea came to me. I said to Madame Marmet, 'We have at Fiesole, in
the Pretorio Palace, a modest little Etruscan museum. Come and visit it
with me. Will you?' She replied it was what she most desired to see in
Italy. We went to the Pretorio Palace; we saw a lioness and a great many
little bronze figures, grotesque, very fat or very thin. The Etruscans
were a seriously gay people. They made bronze caricatures. But the
monkeys--some afflicted with big stomachs, others astonished to show
their bones--Madame Marmet looked at them with reluctant admiration. She
contemplated them like--there is a beautiful French word that escapes
me--like the monuments and the trophies of Monsieur Marmet."

Madame Martin smiled. But she was restless. She thought the sky dull, the
streets ugly, the passers-by common.

"Oh, darling, the Prince will be very glad to receive you in his palace."

"I do not think so."

"Why, darling, why?"

"Because I do not please him much."

Vivian Bell declared that the Prince, on the contrary, was a great
admirer of the Countess Martin.

The horses stopped before the Albertinelli palace. On the sombre facade
were sealed those bronze rings which formerly, on festival nights, held
rosin torches. These bronze rings mark, in Florence, the palaces of the
most illustrious families. The palace had an air of lofty pride. The
Prince hastened to meet them, and led them through the empty salons into
the gallery. He, apologized for showing canvases which perhaps had not an
attractive aspect. The gallery had been formed by Cardinal Giulio
Albertinelli at a time when the taste for Guido and Caraccio, now fallen,
had predominated. His ancestor had taken pleasure in gathering the works
of the school of Bologna. But he would show to Madame Martin several
paintings which had not displeased Miss Bell, among others a Mantegna.

The Countess Martin recognized at once a banal and doubtful collection;
she felt bored among the multitude of little Parroce