"And yet a little knowledge of a few peculiar facts—a pinch of history—yet, once again, who shall be blamed? Who can be fairly asked to possess that pinch of history which means so much in this room?"
"How could history have helped us, signor?" asked Henry Lennox.
"I shall tell you. But history is always helpful. There is history everywhere around us—not only here, but in every other department of this noble house. Take these chairs. By the accident of training, I read in them a whole chapter of the beginnings of the Renaissance; to you they are only old furniture. You thought them Spanish because they were bought in Spain—at Valencia, as a matter of fact. You did not know that, Sir Walter; but your grandfather purchased them there—to the despair and envy of another collector. Yes, these chairs have speaking faces to me, just as the ceiling over them has a speaking face also. It, too, is copied. History, in fact, breathes its very essence in this home. If I knew more history than I do, then other beautiful things would talk to me as freely as these chairs—and as freely as the trophies of the chase and the tiger skins below no doubt talk to Sir Walter. But are we not all historical—men, women, even children? To exist is to take your place in history, though, as in my case, the fact will not be recorded save in the 'Chronicles' of the everlasting. Yes, I am ancient history now, and go far back, before Italy was a united kingdom. Much entertaining information will be lost for ever when I die. Believe me, while the new generation is crying forth the new knowledge and glorying in its genius, we of the old guard are sinking into our graves and taking the old knowledge with us. Yet they only rediscover for themselves what we know. Human life is the snake with its tail in its mouth—Nietzsche's eternal recurrence and the commonplaces of our forefathers are echoed on the lips of our children as great discoveries."
Henry Lennox ventured to bring him back to the point.
"What knowledge—what particular branch of information should a man possess, signor, to find out what you have found?"
"Merely an adornment, my young friend, a side branch of withered learning, not cultivated, I fear, by your Scotland Yard. Yet I have known country gentlemen to be skilled in it. The practice of heraldry. I marked your arms on your Italian gates. I must look at those gates again—they are not very good, I fear. But the arms—a chevron between three lions—a fine coat, yet probably not so ancient as the gates."
"It was such a thing as bothered me in Florence," said Sir Walter. "I'd seen it before somewhere, but where I know not—a bull's head of gold on a red field."
Signor Mannetti started and laughed.
"Ha-ha! We will come to the golden bull presently, Sir Walter. You shall meet him, I promise you!"
Then he broke off and patted his forehead.