"Would that I had not seen it!" exclaimed Fra Angelo, with a sigh.
"I must explain Master Barbagallo's learning, and the interest he takes in my family gallery," said the marquis to Michel. "He has passed his life in this labor of patience, and no one is so familiar as he with Sicilian genealogies. My family was connected by marriage in the past with the Princess of Palmarosa's, and even more closely with the family of Castro-Reale, of which you have doubtless heard."
"I heard a great deal about it yesterday," replied Michel, with a smile.
"Very good; when I became the last heir of that family, after the death of the famous prince known as the Destatore, all that came to me by that succession—to which I gave very little thought, I promise you—was a collection of ancestors which I did not even care to unpack, but which Master Barbagallo, being enamored of curios of that sort, took pains to clean and classify, and to hang in their proper order in the gallery you are about to inspect. There were already in that gallery, in addition to my own direct ancestors, a goodly number of ancestors of the Palmarosa line, and Princess Agatha, who cares nothing for collections of the sort, sent me hers, saying that it would be better to collect them in a single place. That gave Master Barbagallo a very long and difficult task, which he executed with honor to himself. Come, all of you, for I have many characters to present to Michel, and it may be that he will need his father's and uncle's assistance to hold his own against so many dead men."
"I retire, in order not to impose my presence upon your lordships," said Master Barbagallo, after accompanying them to the gallery to deposit his Sicilian captain; "I will return some other time to put my picture in place; unless the signor marquis desires that I should give Master Michelangelo Lavoratori, whose very humble servant I am to-day and always, the history of the originals of these portraits."
"What, signor majordomo," laughed Michel, "you know the story of all these characters? There are more than three hundred of them!"
"There are five hundred and thirty, your lordship, and I not only know their names and all the incidents of their lives, with their precise dates, but I also know the name, age, and sex of all the children who died before their features were reproduced, to be transmitted to posterity. There have been three hundred and twenty-seven, including those born dead. I have omitted none but those that never were baptized."
"That is marvellous!" said Michel; "but if I had been in your place, having such a memory, I should have preferred to learn the history of the human race rather than that of a single family."
"The human race doesn't interest me," replied the majordomo, gravely. "His excellency, Prince Dionigi de Palmarosa, father of the present princess, did not entrust me with the duty of teaching his children history. But, as I loved to be occupied, and as I had much time to myself, in a house where no banquets or parties have been given for two generations, he advised me, for amusement, to make a summary of the history of his family, which was scattered through a multitude of manuscript folio volumes, which you can see in the library at Palmarosa, and all of which I examined and studied to the last letter."
"And did it really amuse you?"