ch by Perugino,
and a Madonna by Correggio. Hardly less celebrated, but sharply at odds
with the ecclesiastical subjects of the paintings, was the mantle,
carved in a bacchanalian procession of satyrs and nymphs--a model said
to have been made by Niccola Pisano.

The floor, of the inevitable black and white marble, was strewn with
rugs; and in front of desk and sofa bear skins had been added as a
double protection against the cold. The furniture was modern upholstery,
with gay chintz slip-covers. Frilled muslin curtains were crossed over
and draped high under outer ones of chintz. And everywhere there were
flowers--roses, orange blossoms, and camellias; in tall jars and short,
on every available piece of furniture. Scarcely less in evidence were
photographs, propped against walls, ornaments, and flower jars; long,
narrow, highly glazed European photographs with white backgrounds,
uniformed officers, sentimentally posed engaged couples, young mothers
in full evening dress reading to barefooted babies out of gingerly held
picture books. There were photographs of all varieties; big ones and
little ones, framed and unframed--the king and the queen with
crown-surmounted settings and boldly written first names, and "_A la
cara Eleanor_" inscribed above that of her majesty. In the other
photographs the signatures grew in complication and length as their
aristocratic importance diminished. Books and magazines littered the
tables; French, Italian, and English in indiscriminate association. A
workbasket of plain sewing lay open among the pillows on the sofa. An
American magazine, with a paper-knife inserted between its leaves, was
tossed beside a tooled morocco edition of Tacitus. A crucifix hung
beneath the Correggio; a plaster model of the Discobolus stood between
the windows.

And in the midst of old and new, religious and pagan, priceless and
insignificant, sat her Excellency, the ex-American beauty and present
chatelaine of the great family of the princes of the Sansevero, in a
golf skirt and walking boots, a plain starched shirtwaist and stock tie,
adding to the wrinkles in her forehead and in the corners of her eyes by
trying to figure out how, with forty thousand lire, she was going to pay
a debt of sixty thousand lire and have enough left over to open the
great palace in Rome, and realize a dream that had always been in her
heart--to take Nina out in Roman society, to give herself the delight of
showing Rome to Nina, a