had come to her the day before.

"You had gone, darling, to Carmine with Monsieur Dechartre, and you had
left at Fiesole Madame Marmet, who is an agreeable person, a moderate
and polished woman. She knows many anecdotes about persons of
distinction who live in Paris. And when she tells them, she does as my
cook Pompaloni does when he serves eggs: he does not put salt in them,
but he puts the salt-cellar next to them. Madame Marmet's tongue is very
sweet, but the salt is near it, in her eyes. Her conversation is like
Pompaloni's dish, my love--each one seasons to his taste. Oh, I like
Madame Marmet a great deal. Yesterday, after you had gone, I found
her alone and sad in a corner of the drawing-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