k properly the portrait of your Excellency."

Indeed, the face of the last of the tyrants and his grandson's face
were surprisingly alike.

"Conte Antonio Decimose'mo was Conte when, as a lad, I had the honour
to join the family," the old servant went on. "It was he who had for
consort the Lordessa Crahforrdi of England. After his death, there was
the Revolution, by which we annexed to Sampaolo another island called
Sardinia. The Lordessa was taken prisoner in these rooms, with the
Conte-figlio, and banished from the country. Then the King of Sardinia
was elected tyrant of both islands, and the government was removed from
Vallanza to Turin. That was many years ago, fifty years ago. When the
Pope died, the government was again removed, and now it is at Rome."

"Oh? Is the Pope dead?" Adrian questioned.

"Che si, Signore--dupo lung' anni," the old man assured him.

They strolled about the town for a little, before returning to the
hotel--through the narrow cobble-paved streets, with their alternations
of splendour and squalor, their palaces, churches, hovels, their dark
little shops, their neglected shrines, their vociferous population,
their heterogeneous smells--and along the Riva, with its waterside
bustle, its ships loading and unloading, and its unexampled view of bay
and mountains.

"Do you see this stick?" asked Adrian, holding up his walking-stick.

"What about it?" asked Anthony.

"I 'm coming to that," said Adrian. "But first you must truthfully
answer a question. Which end of this stick would you prefer to be--the
bright silver handle or the earth-stained ferrule?"

"Don't know," said Anthony, with an air of weariness.

"Don't you?" marvelled Adrian. "How funny. Well, then, you must
understand that this stick is but an emblem--a thing's sign. Now for
the thing signified. Have you ever paused to moralize over the irony
that determines the fates of families? Take, for example, a family
that begins with a great man--a great soldier, a great saint, for
instance--and then for evermore thereafter produces none but
mediocrities. I hope you perceive the irony of that. But
contrariwise, take a family that goes on for centuries producing
mediocrities, and suddenly ends with the production of a genius. Take
my family, just for a case in point. Here I come of a chain of
progenitors reaching straight back to Adam; and of not one of them save
Adam and myself, has the world ever heard. And even A