The Heart of Rome | Page 4

the emblem of a race that had lived almost on the same
spot for eight hundred years, through good and bad repute, but in nearly
uninterrupted prosperity. The Baroness, who hankered after greatness,
felt that the gloom was a twilight of gods. She stood still before the
canopy, the symbol of princely rank and privilege, the invisible silk
bellows were silent for a few seconds, and she wondered whether there
were any procurable sum which she and her husband would grudge in
exchange for the acknowledged right to display a crowned eagle,
cheeky, argent and sable, in their hall, under a canopy draped with their

own colours. She sighed, since no one could hear her, and she went on.
The sigh was not only for the hopelessness of ever reaching such social
greatness; it was in part the outward show of a real regret that it should
have come to an untimely end. Her admiration of princes was as sincere
as her longing to be one of them; she had at least the melancholy
satisfaction of sympathizing with them in their downfall. It brought her
a little nearer to them in imagination if not in fact.
The evolution of the snob has been going on quickly of late, and
quicker than ever since vast wealth has given so many of the species
the balance of at least one sort of power in society. His thoughts are
still the same, but his outward shape approaches strangely near to that
of the human being. There are snobs now, who behave almost as nicely
in the privacy of their homes as in the presence of a duchess. They are
much more particular as to the way in which others shall behave to
them. That is a test, by the bye. The snob thinks most of the treatment
he receives from the world; the gentleman thinks first how he shall act
courteously to others.
The Baroness went on and entered the outer reception room, and
looking before her she could see through the open doors of the
succeeding drawing-rooms, where the windows had been opened or
perhaps not closed on the previous evening. It was all vast, stately and
deserted. Only ten days earlier she had been in the same place at a great
reception, brilliant with beautiful women and handsome men, alive
with the flashing of jewels and decorations in the vivid light, full of the
discreet noise of society in good-humour, full of faces she knew, and
voices familiar, and of the moonlight of priceless pearls and the
sunlight of historic diamonds; all of which manifestations she dearly
loved.
Her husband had perhaps known what was coming, and how soon, but
she had not. There was something awful in the contrast. As she went
through one of the rooms a mouse ran from under the fringe of a velvet
curtain and took refuge under an armchair. She had sat in that very
chair ten days ago and the Russian ambassador had talked to her; she
remembered how he had tried to extract information from her about the

new issue of three and a half per cent national bonds, because her
husband was one of the financiers who were expected to "manipulate"
the loan.
A portrait of a Conti in black velvet, by Velasquez, looked down,
coldly supercilious, at the empty armchair under which the mouse was
hiding. It could make no difference, great or small, to him, whether the
Baroness Volterra ever sat there again to talk with an ambassador; he
had sat where he pleased, undisturbed in his own house, to the end of
his days, and no one can take the past from the dead, except a modern
German historian.
Not a sound broke the stillness, except the steady plash of the water
falling into the fountain in the wide court, heard distinctly through the
closed windows. The Baroness wondered if any one were awake except
the old porter downstairs. She knew the house tolerably well. Only the
Princess and her two unmarried daughters slept in the apartment she
had entered, far off, at the very end, in rooms at the corner overlooking
the small square and the narrow street. The rest of the old palace was
surrounded by dark and narrow streets, but the court was wide and full
of sunshine. The only son of the house, though he was now the Prince,
lived on the floor above, with his young wife and their only child, in
what had been a separate establishment, after the old Roman custom.
The Baroness went to one of the embrasures of the great drawing-room
and looked through the panes at the windows of the upper story. All
that she could see were shut; there was not a sign of life in the huge
building. Ruin