"That, of course, put me under obligation to rescue you when the fool Minardi mixed us up," explained Count Rodrigo gayly. "Now I am taking you to my home—for a drink, at least, if you will honor me."
"It is I who am honored," said Dorning without enthusiasm. He did not wish to offend his rescuer. But he would have preferred now to have banished this whole unpleasant episode from his mind by being taken at once back to his hotel in Naples. He had had himself driven out along the shore in an open carriage from his stuffy hotel for the sake of the view and the air. The carriage and its patient driver were even now waiting for him at the café. Dorning had sat at the Café Del Mare for half an hour absorbing a bottle of wine and the glories of the moonlit bay. Then had come this tumultuous destruction of his solitude, followed by the jouncing escape beside this handsome young Italian of about his own age, which was twenty-five. Dorning fancied neither the man nor his gayety.
"Ah—we arrive!" sang out Count Rodrigo suddenly and celebrated the fact by swinging so sharply in through the iron gates that Dorning was almost flung from the seat. They glided around a circular drive and stopped in front of a typical stucco Renaissance palace looming massively in the half-darkness and even in the bad light showing the need of repair.
The Italian led the way through the great grilled door and into the stone-paved entrance hall with its high ceilings and elaborately frescoed walls. John Dorning's interest was aroused at once. Whatever the Count Torriani was, his residence showed almost immediate prospects to the entering visitor of being a treasure house of Italian art and sculpture.
Count Rodrigo clapped his hands. "Maria! Maria!" he called. And to Dorning, "Please sit down." He glanced at his guest, who was wholly occupied in surveying the shadowy Renaissance angels and saints on the wall opposite. "You are interested in murals!—but, of course, Dorning and Son. I remember the shop on Fifth Avenue. I was in New York last summer. I shall be glad to show you around this place. I have some originals that are considered very good."
He clapped his hands again. "Maria!" he called. Maria appeared. She was past middle age and fat and sleepy. She panted in anxiously and nodded vigorously as Rodrigo ordered wine. She panted in again soon, a scrolled solid silver tray with wine bottles and glasses in her hand, and set it down before the two men. They drank solemnly to the destruction of Minardi.
John Dorning was almost immediately glad that he had come. Amid these splendors of a bygone day he was at home. Peace and contentment, aided by the wine, crept over him. The sixteenth century chair upon which he sat, the intricately carved table which held his wine-glass, the frescoed walls, the painted ceilings—these were part of his world, the world he loved.
Young Count Rodrigo sensed what sort of man his guest was at once, and was pleased. For there was in the young Italian, among other qualities less desirable, a strain of appreciation of the beautiful. He was proud of the masterpieces of art which his run-down palace sheltered. He abandoned abruptly his description, over the second glass of wine, of how Minardi's mistake had come about and switched the conversation to the Renaissance and what it owed to the famous Giotto, a rare specimen of whose work hung before them.
John Dorning warmed up at once. In half an hour he found himself liking his host and rendering silent tribute to the man's intimate knowledge of the whole range of Italian painting and sculpture. The flippancy had gone out of Torriani's manner. The two men argued, agreed, split, and drank more wine. Maria, waddling in and out with refreshments, wondered if she would ever again get to her bed. Dorning suggested that one trouble with the Renaissance painters was that they laid too little emphasis upon technical perfection.
"Technical perfection—bah!" cried Torriani, springing up, spilling his wine, striding over to the painting by Giotto. "Look at this, man! Look at it. And try to tell me what knowledge of form and mere technical cleverness have got to do with a genius like Giotto, who feels, who spreads the very breath of life upon canvas!" The black eyes flashed. Torriani thumped his chest.