The sword of wealth

by Henry Wilton Thomas

“You may be sure of that, babbo!” she laughed, and turned to receive her aunt’s caresses. “Here I am and here I stay. Long live Italia is my song, and I think Antonio will join in the chorus.”

“With all my heart!” Tarsis said genially, his hopes taking a sudden bound. It was the first time she had addressed him by his Christian name.

Never had anyone seen Hera in better spirits. It was good to be once more in the land she loved, to hear again the familiar “minga” and “lu” of her native patter; but the real inspiration of her gladness, although the fact did not appear to her mind, was that she had come to dwell in the city whose walls enclosed Mario Forza, and whose air he breathed. Aunt Beatrice accepted her lightness of heart triumphantly as a tribute to her own splendid work as a matchmaker. Tarsis’s automobile awaited them, and they got in, all four. Hera noted that the crest of her house was painted none too small on the olive green sides of the car.

Through the spick and span wide, modern streets they rolled to the Barbiondi palace. Milan was gayly picturesque in her springtime magic of light and colour. An impress of the Gothic feeling met the eye in buildings that recalled where they did not typify the pointed architecture of the north. They passed a procession of priests and acolytes following a crozier that flashed the sunlight. Here and there, at a street corner, a public porter slept peacefully while awaiting a call to work. For a minute or two they were in the busy movement of Via Manzoni. Cavalry officers in bright uniforms lounged at the outdoor tables of the cafés, or dragged their sabres lazily amid the throngs of civilians.

Then they entered a quieter way, that yielded vistas of courtyards with frescoed walls, arcades clad in climbing greenery, playing fountains; and at the next turning they were in sight of Palazzo Barbiondi. For two months artisans had been at work restoring the ancient family seat to life and splendour. In point of splendour Tarsis had done somewhat more than recall the past. As they approached the arched gateway Don Riccardo exclaimed at sight of the newly-coloured iron palings tipped with gilt. The fountain in the court was playing. Out of the pool rose an Apollo Musagetes, and from his crown a sparkling shower shot down in diverging lines to symbolise the sun’s rays, or—as the Greeks had it—the arrows of Apollo. The side walls of the court were frescoed with the Barbiondi crown and the “Lux in tenebras lucet” of the once haughty and powerful house.

A corps of domestics in livery of white and olive were waiting, lined on either side of the main entrance. The fountain statues and all the marble ornamenture of the court had been despoiled of their yellow patina, and showed once more in native white. The façade of the palace—accounted one of the noblest in the North—had been spared by the renovator, but its grand staircase, rising from one side of the wide portico, and its carved balustrade, were as white as St. Bernard’s peak. Everywhere that the artisans could turn back the clock they had done so by dint of scouring and scraping, painting and stuccoing, chiselling and carving, tearing out and building in.

Don Riccardo paused at the opening to the grand staircase and looked up at the armorial bearings of his house done in stone.

“Bacco!” he exclaimed, “we are the first Barbiondi to set foot here for more than a hundred years.”

It was in the Duke’s heart to denounce the fungous nobility and shop-keeping snobs who had from time to time violated his ancestral home with their occupancy; but in the presence of Tarsis he bridled his tongue.

“Yes, it is indeed more than a hundred years,” remarked Donna Beatrice, adjusting her lorgnette. “Our eighteenth Riccardo was the last of the line to dwell here. With this day, Antonio,” she added, beaming upon the bridegroom, “we may say with literal truth that the restoration begins. Ah, that eighteenth Duke was an open-handed nobleman—a lord of regal expenditure. Lombardy never had so liberal a patron of the beautiful arts. These mural paintings, I believe, are the fruit of his munificence.”