ine. She was afraid of poor Monaldeschi. You knew it, I knew it, and
Luigi Santinelli knew it. She ordered us to kill him because she
believed he was selling her secrets to the Spanish, and was going to
poison her in their interests. She is always fancying that some one
wants to poison her. Oh, yes, my friend, a most diverting character, for
she thinks of nothing but herself, and her Self is a selfish,
hysterical, cruel, cowardly woman!'[1]

'I detest her for that business at Fontainebleau,' answered Gambardella.

'Precisely. So do I, though she amuses me. To strangle a superfluous
woman is sometimes unavoidable, and there are occasions when it is
wisdom to stab an unnecessary male in the back. But to put an unarmed
gentleman to the wall, so to say, in broad daylight and deliberately
skewer him, being three to one as we were that day, is a thing I shall
decline to do again for all the gold in India, Mexico, and Brazil!'

'Unless it be paid in cash,' suggested Gambardella.

'Cash,' answered Trombin enigmatically, 'is one of the forces of
nature.'

[Footnote 1: For Trombin's view of Christina's character and
Monaldeschi's murder, I am indebted to the admirable and trustworthy
work of Baron de Bildt, a distinguished Swedish diplomatist, entitled
_Christine de Suede et le Cardinal Azzolino_ (Paris, 1899). The writer
points out the singular ignorance of the truth about Monaldeschi
displayed by Browning and the elder Dumas.]

CHAPTER XVI

A week later fashionable Rome was gathered together at the Palazzo
Riario to a feast of poetry and music. Christina had just founded the
Academy which survives to this day in that state of mediocrity above
which it has never risen in nearly two hundred and fifty years, for the
idea had suggested itself to her when she found how easy it was to
attract starving talent to a good dinner. 'Feed the hungry' is a good
motto for those who aim at being patrons of the fine arts, like the
ex-Queen in Rome, or Pignaver in Venice; the only condition is that the
hungry shall be clever or witty starvelings who can pay for their
dinners with their brains. However, when men of talent cease to be
hungry they generally become snobs, and will take the fly of the season
with as much voracity as any trout in May.

The literary and musical receptions at the Palazzo Riario took place in
the portico that opened upon the gardens in those days; for the whole
palace was afterwards rebuilt by the Corsin