h the Cathedral, and if we look sharp, we
'll be in time to hear a Mass. There are Masses every half hour till
ten. Then the Palazzo Rosso. After luncheon and a brief siesta, Isola
Nobile. And after our _caffe con pasticceria_, a donkey-ride in the
country."

When they had heard their Mass, they were approached by the Sacristan,
a little, shrunken, brown old man in a cassock, who offered to serve
them as a guide. The church was very dim and very silent. Here and
there a woman knelt at prayer; here and there a candle burned. The
Sacristan removed the frontal from the High Altar, to show them the
golden reliquary that enshrines the dust of San Guido, and unveiled the
three fine altar-pieces, attributed to Giacomo Fiorentino, "San Guido
Shipwrecked," "San Guide's Return," and "The Good Death of San Guido."
He showed them also, in its glass case, the Sword of the Golden Thorn,
reciting its history; and finally he conducted them to the crypt,
where, under masses of sculptured ner'-antico, emblazoned with their
armorials, some five-and-twenty generations of Valdeschi lie entombed.
What were Anthony's emotions? He must have had emotions.

At the Palazzo Rosso they were invited to write their names and
nationality in the visitors' book; and then a silver-haired,
soft-voiced, gentle-mannered servitor in livery led them up the grand
marble staircase and through an endless suite of airy, stately
rooms--rooms with floors of polished concrete, displaying elaborate
patterns, with tapestried walls and frescoed ceilings, with sparse but
ancient and precious articles of furniture, chandeliers of Venetian
glass, Venetian mirrors, and innumerable paintings, many of them
portraits.

"It's astonishing," said Adrian, "how, by some occult process of
selection, in spite of perpetual marriage with new blood, in spite of
the thousand vicissitudes of time and circumstance, in a given family a
particular feature will persist. There 's the Habsburg lip, for
instance. And here is the Valdeschi nose. From generation to
generation, from century to century, one can recognize in these dead
forefathers of yours the identical nose that is on your face to-day."

It was quite true. Again and again you saw repeated the same
high-bridged, slenderly aquiline nose.

"Sala del trono," announced their cicerone (only, he pronounced it _Sa'
do truno_).

And there, sure enough, at the end of a vast chamber, was "the great
scarlet throne, with t