Don Orsino | Page 6

disappointed woman, for Del Ferice
is a power in the land, a member of parliament, a financier and a

successful schemer, whose doors are besieged by parasites and his
dinner-table by those who wear fine raiment and dwell in kings' palaces.
Del Ferice is the central figure in the great building syndicates which in
1887 are at the height of their power. He juggles with millions of
money, with miles of real estate, with thousands of workmen. He is
director of a bank, president of a political club, chairman of half a
dozen companies and a deputy in the chambers. But his face is
unnaturally pale, his body is over-corpulent, and he has trouble with his
heart. The Del Ferice couple are childless, to their own great
satisfaction.
Anastase Gouache, the great painter, is also in Rome. Sixteen years ago
he married the love of his life, Faustina Montevarchi, in spite of the
strong opposition of her family. But times had changed. A new law
existed and the thrice repeated formal request for consent made by
Faustina to her mother, freed her from parental authority and brotherly
interference. She and her husband passed through some very lean years
in the beginning, but fortune has smiled upon them since that. Anastase
is very famous. His character has changed little. With the love of the
ideal republic in his heart, he shed his blood at Mentana for the great
conservative principle, he fired his last shot for the same cause at the
Porta Pia on the twentieth of September 1870; a month later he was
fighting for France under the gallant Charette--whether for France
imperial, regal or republican he never paused to ask; he was wounded
in fighting against the Commune, and decorated for painting the
portrait of Gambetta, after which he returned to Rome, cursed politics
and married the woman he loved, which was, on the whole, the wisest
course he could have followed. He has two children, both girls, aged
now respectively fifteen and thirteen. His virtues are many, but they do
not include economy. Though his savings are small and he depends
upon his brush, he lives in one wing of an historic palace and gives
dinners which are famous. He proposes to reform and become a miser
when his daughters are married.
"Misery will be the foundation of my second manner, my angel," he
says to his wife, when he has done something unusually extravagant.

But Faustina laughs softly and winds her arm about his neck as they
look together at the last great picture. Anastase has not grown fat. The
gods love him and have promised him eternal youth. He can still buckle
round his slim waist the military belt of twenty years ago, and there is
scarcely one white thread in his black hair.
San Giacinto, the other Saracinesca, who married Faustina's elder sister
Flavia, is in process of making a great fortune, greater perhaps than the
one so nearly thrust upon him by old Montevarchi's compact with
Meschini the librarian and forger. He had scarcely troubled himself to
conceal his opinions before the change of government, being by nature
a calm, fearless man, and under the new order he unhesitatingly sided
with the Italians, to the great satisfaction of Flavia, who foresaw years
of dulness for the mourning party of the Blacks. He had already
brought to Rome the two boys who remained to him from his first
marriage with Serafina Baldi--the little girl who had been born between
the other two children had died in infancy--and the lads had been
educated at a military college, and in 1887 are both officers in the
Italian cavalry, sturdy and somewhat thick-skulled patriots, but
gentlemen nevertheless in spite of the peasant blood. They are tall
fellows enough but neither of them has inherited the father's colossal
stature, and San Giacinto looks with a very little envy on his young
kinsman Orsino who has outgrown his cousins. This second marriage
has brought him issue, a boy and a girl, and the fact that he has now
four children to provide for has had much to do with his activity in
affairs. He was among the first to see that an enormous fortune was to
be made in the first rush for land in the city, and he realised all he
possessed, and borrowed to the full extent of his credit to pay the first
instalments on the land he bought, risking everything with the calm
determination and cool judgment which lay at the root of his strong
character. He was immensely successful, but though he had been bold
to recklessness at the right moment, he saw the great crash looming in
the near future, and when the many were frantic to buy and invest, no
matter at what loss, his