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. Baron Justus could not resist these. He
raised his glass and called Dorsenne to show him a curious armchair,
the carving of a cartel, the embroidery on some material. One glance
sufficed for him to judge.... If the novelist had been capable of
observing, he would have perceived in the detailed knowledge the banker
had of the catalogue the trace of a study too deep not to accord with
some mysterious project.

"There are treasures here," said he. "See these two Chinese vases with
convex lids, with the orange ground decorated with gilding. Those are
pieces no longer made in China. It is a lost art. And this tete-a-tete
decorated with flowers; and this pluvial cope in this case. What a
marvel! It is as good as the one of Pius Second, which was at Pienza and
which has been stolen. I could have bought it at one time for fifteen
hundred francs. It is worth fifteen thousand, twenty thousand, all of
that. Here is some faience. It was brought from Spain when Cardinal
Castagna came from Madrid, when he took the place of Pius Fifth as
sponsor of Infanta Isabella. Ah