to the windows and drew back the curtains.

Sunlight flooded the black and white marble of the floor, and brought
out in sharp detail the splendor of the apartment. The rich colors of
the frescoed walls, the mellow crimson damask upholstering, might have
suggested warmth and comfort, had not a little cloud of white vapor
floating before the maid's lips proclaimed the temperature.

She was a stocky peasant woman, this maid, with good red color in her
cheeks, but she wore a dress of heavy woolen material and a cardigan
jacket over that. Her thick felt slippers pattered briskly over the
stone floor as she went to a clothes-press, carved and beautifully
inlaid, took out a drab-colored woolen wrapper trimmed with common red
fox fur, and, picking up the tray again, mounted the dais of the huge
carved bed.

"If Excellency will make haste, the coffee is good and very hot."

The covers were pushed down just a little, and the princess peered out.

"What sort of a day have we, Marie? Isn't it very cold?"

"Oh, no! It is a beautiful day. But Excellency will say that the coffee
is cold unless it is soon taken."

So again the Princess Sansevero sat up in bed. Her maid placed the
coffee tray before her, and wrapped her quickly in the dressing-gown.
The plain woolen wrapper had looked ugly enough in the maid's hands, but
its drab color and fox fur so toned in with the red-gold hair and creamy
skin of its wearer that an artist, could he have beheld the picture,
would have been filled with delight. It would not in the least have
mattered to him that there was a chip in the cup into which she poured
her coffee, nor that the linen napkin was darned in three places. The
silver breakfast service belonged to a time when such things were
chiseled only for great personages and by master craftsmen. That it was
battered through several centuries of constant handling rather enhanced
than diminished its value. Of the same antiquity was the bed--seven
feet wide, its four posts elaborately carved with fruits and flowers,
and with cupids grouped in the corners of the framework supporting a
dome of crimson damask that matched the hangings. What difference could
it make to the artist that the springless mattress was as hard as a
rock, and lumpy as a ploughed field? With painted walls and vaulted
ceilings that were the apotheosis of luxury, what did it matter that the
raw chill from their stone surface penetrated to the very marrow of her
Exalted