The Baroness was rather more exigent in requiring respect from servants than most princesses of the Holy Roman Empire, for her position in the aristocratic scale was not very well defined.
She was not pleased, and spoke with excessive coldness when she asked if Donna Clementina was at home. The porter stood motionless beside the cab, leaning on his broom. After a pause he said in a rather strange voice that Donna Clementina was certainly in, but that he could not tell whether she were awake or not.
"Please find out," answered the Baroness, with impatience. "I am waiting," she added with an indescribable accent of annoyance and surprise, as if she had never been kept waiting before, in all the fifty years of her more or less fashionable life.
There were speaking-tubes in the porter's lodge, communicating with each floor of the great Conti palace, but the porter did not move.
"I cannot go upstairs and leave the door," he said.
"You can speak to the servant through the tube, I suppose!"
The porter slowly shook his massive head, and his long grey beard wagged from side to side.
"There are no servants upstairs," he said. "There is only the family."
"No servants? Are you crazy?"
"Oh, no!" answered the man meditatively. "I do not think I am mad. The servants all went away last night after dinner, with their belongings. There were only sixteen left, men and women, for I counted them."