“How beautiful it is!” he cried; “how lovely! Oh, mother, the sun-heat across the park!”
The little lady came dancing after him. “Yes, is it not exquisite?” she cried, standing close beside him. “Look at the patch of yellow color there, in the break between the beeches. Why, Otto, since when do you notice the merely beautiful? Do you see that far line of white roof with the sun full upon it? That is the gallery round the new Italian garden. Well, not exactly new, only you have been away such a very long time!”
She pressed his arm. “Now go down to your father,” she added, softly. “Ask him to show you the ‘Daubigny.’ And don’t talk to him of business. You know he doesn’t like it.”
“A fortune for a picture,” said Otto to himself as he closed his mother’s door, “while I was out in Java growing tea!”
He passed along a corridor which was hung with arms of all times and nations, into the large entrance-hall, a museum of old oak and heraldry among the masses of summer flowers.
There he found his father pacing impatiently to and fro. The old Baron, whose life motto had been “Tout s’arrange,” was only impatient about things of no importance. He was now eager to show his son the acquisitions of the last twelve years. He knew that the display would be productive of pleasure neither to himself nor to his heir, but he remained eager all the same.
The returned exile—his heart soft with the morning’s impressions—resolved at once to take an interest in everything. “Mother was speaking of a new picture,” he began, “a daub—daub-something. She said I must be sure and ask to see it.”
The Baron smiled. “The Daubigny,” he replied. “I suppose the name has not penetrated to India yet. With us, you know, he has made himself a little reputation.” He led the way into a small drawing-room, but stopped before pointing to his treasure. “Do you notice any change here?” he asked. “Anything new in the arrangement of the whole?”
Otto hesitated. He was horribly ill at ease, and afraid of making a fool of himself. It was the old sensation of twelve years ago. He felt like a shy man that doesn’t know a cob from a charger suddenly called upon to judge of a horse.
“Oh, it’s nothing,” said the Baron. “Only the ceiling’s been painted. It was done by Guicciardi, the same who decorated the last Loggia in the Prelli Palace just before the poor prince went smash. That was a magnificent finale, Otto. Poor old Prince Luigi knew that he couldn’t possibly hold out much longer—not a hundred thousand francs to the good, I am told. And he gave a commission to Guicciardi to paint the place with that last hundred thousand, just finished the thing and left an immortal whole to his country, and then—pwhit!” The Baron snapped his fingers lightly. “Pooh,” he said, “I know you don’t care for that kind of thing. I beg your pardon. I didn’t mean to give you offence. That is the ‘Daubigny.’”