rooms is as much a matter of rigid rule as in the houses
of the ancient Romans, where the vestibule preceded the atrium, the
atrium the peristyle, and the latter the last rooms which looked upon
the garden. So in the later palace, the door from the first landing of
the grand staircase opens upon an outer hall, uncarpeted, but crossed by
a strip of matting, and furnished only with a huge table and
old-fashioned chests, made with high backs, on which are painted or
carved the arms of the family. Here, at least two or three footmen are
supposed to be in perpetual readiness to answer the door, the lineally
descended representatives of the armed footmen who lounged there four
hundred years ago. Next to the hall comes the antechamber, sometimes
followed by a second, and here is erected the 'baldacchino,' the
coloured canopy which marks the privilege of the sixty 'conscript
families' of Rome, who rank as princes. It recalls the times when,
having powers of justice, and of life and death, the lords sat in state
under the overhanging silks, embroidered with their coats of arms, to
administer the law. Beyond the antechamber comes the long succession of
state apartments, lofty, ponderously decorated, heavily furnished with
old-fashioned gilt or carved chairs that stand symmetrically against the
walls, and on the latter are hung pictures, priceless works of old
masters beside crude portraits of the last century, often arranged much
more with regard to the frames than to the paintings. Stiff-legged
pier-tables of marble and alabaster face the windows or are placed
between them; thick curtains that can be drawn quite back cover the
doors; strips of hemp carpet lead straight from one door to another; the
light is dim and cold, half shut out by the window curtains, and gets a
peculiar quality of sadness and chilliness, which is essentially
characteristic of every old Roman house, where the reception rooms are
only intended to be used at night, and the sunny side is exclusively
appropriated to the more intimate life of the owners. There may be
three, four, six, ten of those big drawing-rooms in succession, each
covering about as much space as a small house in New York or London,
before one comes to the closed door that gives access to the princess'
boudoir, beyond which, generally returning in a direction parallel with
the reception rooms, is her bedroom, and the prince's, and the latter's
study, and then the private dining-room, the sta