"Are the public admitted to the private apartments," Anthony doubted, holding back.
"No, Signore," said the old man. "But I think, if the Signore will pardon me, that the Signore's Excellency will be a connection of the family."
Anthony all but jumped.
"Why on earth should you think that?" he wondered.
"It's the persistent feature," said Adrian, in English, with a chuckle. "The Signore's Excellency is betrayed by the Signore's Excellency's beak."
"If the Signore will pardon me, I observed that the Signore's name, when he wrote in the visitors' book, was Crahforrdi of England," the old man explained. "But the Crahforrdi of England are a house cognate to ours. The consort of the Conte who was Conte when I had the honour of entering the family, nearly sixty years ago, was a Crahforrdi of England, a lordessa. Moreover it is in the Signore's face. If the Signori will favour me, it will give me great pleasure to show them what they will think is the Signore's own portrait."
In size and shape the private apartments were simply a continuation of the state apartments, but they were furnished in modern fashion, with a great deal of luxury, and, in so far as the enveloping brown hollands would permit one to opine, with a great deal of taste. "The family occupy this palace during the cold months only. In summer they make a villegglatura to Isola Nobile. Therefore you do not see these rooms at their best," the old man apologized. In what he described as the gabine'o segre'o of the Countess, over the fireplace, hung the full-length, life-size portrait of a gentleman, in the dress of eighteen-forty-something—high stock, flowered waistcoat, close-fitting buff trousers, and full-bottomed blue frock-coat, very tight above the hips.
"Count Antonio the Seventeenth, the last of our tyrants. The Signori will be aware that we were tyrants of Sampaolo for many centuries," said the old man, not without a touch of pride. Then, bowing to Anthony, "One would think properly the portrait of your Excellency."
Indeed, the face of the last of the tyrants and his grandson's face were surprisingly alike.
"Conte Antonio Decimose'mo was Conte when, as a lad, I had the honour to join the family," the old servant went on. "It was he who had for consort the Lordessa Crahforrdi of England. After his death, there was the Revolution, by which we annexed to Sampaolo another island called Sardinia. The Lordessa was taken prisoner in these rooms, with the Conte-figlio, and banished from the country. Then the King of Sardinia was elected tyrant of both islands, and the government was removed from Vallanza to Turin. That was many years ago, fifty years ago. When the Pope died, the government was again removed, and now it is at Rome."