The Heart of Rome | Page 3

There is no language in the world which can say more in one
word than the Italian, or less in ten thousand, according to the humour
of the speaker.
The Baroness took no notice as she went up the stairs. She was not very
tall, and was growing slowly and surely stout, but she carried her rather
large head high and had cultivated importance, as a fine art, with some
success. She moved steadily, with a muffled sound as of voluminous
invisible silk bellows that opened and shut at each step; her outer dress

was sombre, but fashionable, and she wore a long gold chain of curious
and fine workmanship to carry her hand-glass, for she was near-sighted.
Her thick hair was iron-grey, her small round eyes were vaguely dark
with greenish lights, her complexion was like weak coffee and milk,
sallow, but smooth, even and healthy. She was a strong woman of fifty
years, well used to the world and its ways; acquisitive, inquisitive and
socially progressive; not knowing how to wish back anything from the
past, so long as there was anything in the future to wish for; a good
wife for an ambitious man.
The magnificent marble staircase already looked neglected; there were
deep shadows of dust in corners that should have been polished, there
was a coat of grey dust on the head and shoulders of the colossal
marble statue of Commodus in the niche on the first landing; in the
great window over the next, the armorial crowned eagle of the Conti,
cheeky, argent and sable, had a dejected look, as if he were moulting.
It was in March, and though the sun was shining brightly outside, and
the old porter wore his linen jacket, as if it were already spring, there
was a cold draught down the staircase, and the Baroness instinctively
made haste up the steps, and was glad when she reached the big
swinging door covered with red baize and studded with smart brass
nails, which gave access to the grand apartment.
By force of habit, she opened it and went in. There used to be always
two men in the outer hall, all day long, and sometimes four, ready to
announce visitors or to answer questions, as the case might be. It was
deserted now, a great, dismal, paved hall, already dingy with dust. One
of the box-benches was open, and the tail of a footman's livery
greatcoat which had been thrown in carelessly, hung over the edge and
dragged on the marble floor.
The Baroness realized that the porter had spoken the truth and that all
the servants had left the house, as the rats leave a sinking ship. One
must really have seen an old ship sink in harbour to know how the rats
look, black and grey, fat and thin, old and young, their tiny beads of
eyes glittering with fright as they scurry up the hatches and make for
every deck port and scupper, scrambling and tumbling over each other

till they flop into the water and swim away, racing for safety, each
making a long forked wake on the smooth surface, with a steady quick
ripple like the tearing of thin paper into strips.
The strong middle-aged woman who stood alone in the empty hall
knew nothing of sinking vessels or the ways of rats, but she had known
incidentally of more than one catastrophe like this, in the course of her
husband's ascendant career, and somehow he had always been
mysteriously connected with each one. An evil-speaking old
diplomatist had once said that he remembered Baron Volterra as a
pawn-broking dealer in antiquities, in Florence, thirty years earlier;
there was probably no truth in the story, but after Volterra was elected a
Senator of the Kingdom, a member of the opposition had alluded to it
with piquant irony and the result had been the exchange of several
bullets at forty paces, whereby honour was satisfied without bloodshed.
The seconds, who were well disposed to both parties, alone knew how
much or how little powder there was in the pistols, and they were
discreet men, who kept the secret.
The door leading to the antechamber was wide open, and the Baroness
went on deliberately, looking about through her hand-glass, in the half
light, for the shutters were not all open. Dust everywhere, the dust that
falls silently at night from the ancient wooden ceilings and painted
beams of Roman palaces, the dust of centuries accumulated above and
sifting for ever to the floors below. It was on the yellow marble pier
tables, on the dim mirrors in their eighteenth century frames, on the
high canopy draped with silver and black beneath which the effigy of
another big cheeky eagle seemed to be silently moulting under his
antique crown,