“I had forgotten to tell you, Madame, that my friend will accept nothing but thanks.”
“Ah, that is truly noble of him, is it not, Cristoforo?”
All the answer the old Count made was to take my hands and shake them again.
I used the opportunity to put forward my request in behalf of M. Charnot. He listened attentively.
“I will give orders. You shall see everything—everything.”
Then, considering our interview at an end, he bowed and withdrew to his own apartments.
I looked for the Countess Dannegianti. She had sunk into her great armchair, and was weeping hot tears.
Ten minutes later, M. Charnot and Jeanne entered with me into the jealously guarded museum.
Museum was the only name to give to a collection of such artistic value, occupying, as it did, the whole of the ground floor to the right of the hall. Two rooms ran parallel to each other, filled with pictures, medals, and engravings, and were connected by a narrow gallery devoted to sculpture.
Hardly was the door opened when M. Charnot sought the famous medals with his eye. There they were in the middle of the room in two rows of cases. He was deeply moved. I thought he was about to make a raid upon them, attracted after his kind by the ‘auri sacra fames’, by the yellow gleam of those ancient coins, the names, family, obverse and reverse of which he knew by heart. But I little understood the enthusiast.