“Of course; she wore a blue brocade dress and her incomparable pearls; it all comes back to me. King Umberto was in uniform; he carried a helmet with white plume under his arm. Mr. and Mrs. Charles Francis Adams were here. Do you remember the Austrian diplomat’s fascinating court dress? And that Russian military attaché in Cossack uniform with a black patch over one eye?”
“Yes, what a hero you thought him till I told you his poor eye had been knocked out by a careless woman’s umbrella.”
The Marchesa Villamarina received us in the room where Mrs. MacVeagh used to give tea. As we sat talking, we heard a merry little scream of dismay; the Marchesa, excusing herself, hurried to the next room. Then we heard a laugh like a silver chime.
“It’s her voice,” I whispered.
In a moment the Marchesa returned, smiling and merry.
Queen Margherita, her eyes bright with laughter, received us in her library. The Queen’s dress was like the plumage of a silver pheasant; dress is a fine art with her. You never know what she has on, but you always know it is the perfect thing for the hour. The library is an immense apartment, even for Rome, full of color and atmosphere. It suits her as the background in a Velasquez portrait suits the central figure. The highest point of light was a blaze of yellow azaleas on the mantel. There was no senseless bric-a-brac, but every article of furniture was a gem. One who reads the character of a person from the room he or she lives in, would guess that this was the home of a woman of taste and of action; it was comfortable rather than luxurious; there was nothing of the “dreadful too much.” On the walls hung a few pictures, among them J.’s Dante in Exile. On the writing table stood his portrait of King Umberto. J. saw in a moment what had happened to it. The portrait is a silver-point drawing. When these are first made their color is very like a pencil drawing; with time the silver becomes oxidized, and turns darker, the tone improving every year till it becomes a rich soft tarnished color. While J. was explaining this to Queen Margherita, the Marchesa told me what had been the matter.
“In writing her name upon the photograph her Majesty designed to give you, she had the misfortune to upset the ink.”
“It is because her Majesty is so human,” said the Marchesa, “that one has that adoration for her.”
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