His sister bored him, and her entourage bored him still more. It was infinitely more convenient every now and then to borrow sums of money from her to meet current expenses, on the tacit understanding that such loans would never be repaid, than to take up his abode in Palazzo Acorari, as the princess had at first more than once suggested he should do.
Monsieur d'Antin was an egoist, pure and simple, but he could be a very agreeable egoist—so long as he was supplied with all he wanted. Fortunately, perhaps, for his popularity, his egoism was tempered by an almost imperturbable good-humor, which, as a rule, prevented it from ruffling the nerves of others.
There are some men, and a great many women, who invariably succeed in obtaining what they want out of daily life. Their needs are trifling, possibly, but then life is made up of trifles—if one chooses to live only for the present. But to be a really successful egoist, it is necessary at all events to acquire a reputation for good-humor.
Monsieur d'Antin had acquired this reputation in Rome, as he had acquired it elsewhere; and he was shrewd enough to make it one of his most useful possessions. Indeed, it was almost a pleasure to lose money to Monsieur d'Antin at cards, or to place at his disposal any convenience of which he might momentarily be in need, such was his invariable bonhomie in society. He had very soon made a place for himself in the Roman world, and in this it must be confessed that he had shown remarkable ingenuity. Had he arrived in the Eternal City possessed of ready money, it would have made no difference whether he was a Belgian gentleman or an English or American "bounder," for all Rome would have willingly allowed him to entertain it at the Grand Hotel or elsewhere, provided he got the right society women to "run him." But Baron d'Antin had arrived in Rome with no reputation at all, beyond that of being an elderly viveur who happened to be the brother of the Principessa di Montefiano. He had studied his ground, however, and it had not taken him long to come to the conclusion that an unofficial foreigner, to be a social success in modern Rome, must usually be either an adventurer or a snob, and that the two almost invariably went together. Being a gentleman in his own country, albeit in somewhat straitened circumstances, Monsieur d'Antin had at first been amazed at the apparent inability of the average Romans of society to distinguish between a foreigner, man or woman, who was well-bred and one who was not. Finally, he had come to the conclusion that good-breeding was not expected from the unofficial foreigner, nor, indeed, any other of the usual passports to society—but merely a supply of ready money and a proper appreciation of the condescension on the part of the Roman nobility in allowing it to be spent on their entertainment. This, however, was not a condition of affairs that suited Monsieur d'Antin's plans. He had come to Rome not to be lived upon by the society he found there, but to make that society useful to him. That he had done so was entirely due to his own social talents, and to his apparently amiable disposition. He had no need of the Palazzo Acorari, so far as his society and his food were concerned, for there were few evenings of the week during the winter and spring that he had not a dinner invitation; and if by any chance he had no engagement for that meal, there were various methods at his disposal of supplying the deficiency.
Altogether, Baron d'Antin had become persona grata in Roman society, and in his good-humored, careless way he had deliberately laid himself out to be so, even waiving his prejudices and suppressing a certain nervous irritation which the Anglo-Saxon race generally produced in him, sufficiently to dine with its Roman members in their rented palaces.
"My dear Jeanne," he would say to his sister, "you have no sense of humor—absolutely none at all. I dined the other night with some of my Anglo-Saxon friends—I should rather say that I passed some hours of the evening in eating and drinking with them. The wines were execrable—execrable!—and the man who poured them out told us their supposed dates. Some of them, I believe, had been purchased when Noah sold off his cellar after the subsidence of the flood—although, if I remember rightly, he liked his wine, and his—well, sacred history is more in your line than mine, Jeanne. In any case, it was very amusing—and when one looked at the fine old rooms—the mise en scène of the comedy, you know—it was more amusing still."
But Monsieur d'Antin was much too shrewd to laugh at any of the component parts of the society he had determined to exploit. Had he wanted nothing out of it, as he frequently told himself, he could have afforded to laugh a good deal; and, being possessed of a very keen sense of humor, he would probably have done so. As it was, however, he concealed his amusement, or, at the most, allowed himself to give it rein when calling upon his sister, who was unable to appreciate his sarcasms, living as she did, completely apart from the cosmopolitan society in which her brother preferred to move.
Monsieur d'Antin had been paying the princess one of his occasional visits, which he did at regular intervals. To say the truth, he did not by any means approve of the compatriot he as often as not would find sitting with his sister when he was announced. He was well aware that Jeanne was a very pious woman; and very pious women, especially those who had reached a certain age, liked to have a priest at their beck and call. This, Monsieur d'Antin considered, was very natural—pathetically natural, indeed. All the same, he wished that the Abbé Roux had been an Italian, and not a Belgian priest. When Monsieur d'Antin had first appeared upon the scene in Rome, he had instantly felt that the director of his sister's spiritual affairs was not over well pleased at his coming. Accustomed as he was to study those with whom he was likely at any time to be brought much into contact, Baron d'Antin had at once arrived at the conclusion that the abbé probably did not confine himself to the direction of Princess Montefiano's spiritual concerns only; otherwise the advent of her brother would have left him profoundly indifferent. A sudden instinct told Monsieur d'Antin that he and the priest must clash—and then he had reflected, not without some humor, that, after all, there might be such a thing as honor among thieves. He had done his best to conciliate the Abbé Roux whenever they had chanced to meet at Palazzo Acorari, but the priest had not responded in any way to his advances. Monsieur d'Antin knew that the late Prince Montefiano had left as much as the law allowed him to leave in his wife's hands, and that she was his daughter's sole guardian until the girl should marry or come of age. The princess, however, had never written to her brother concerning her affairs—neither had there been any particular reason why she should do so. Rome had absorbed her, and even for some years before her marriage she had practically become Roman in everything but in name. There are many, both women and men, whom Rome has absorbed in a similar way; nor can an explanation of her magnetic attraction always be found in religion or in art, since the irreligious and the inartistic are equally prone to fall under her spell. Rather, perhaps, is the secret of her power to be found in the mysterious sense of universal motherhood which clings around her name—in the knowledge, at once awe-inspiring and comforting, that there is no good and no evil, no joy and no sorrow which humanity can experience, unknown to her; and that however heavily the burden may bear upon our shoulders as we walk through her streets, multitudes more laden than we have trod those stones before us, and have found—rest.
It could hardly be supposed, however, that the burden borne by Princess Montefiano was of a nature requiring the psychological assistance of Rome to lighten it. So far as she was concerned—and in this she differed in no respect from many other pious people of both sexes—Rome merely suggested itself to her as a place offering peculiar facilities for the keeping of her soul in a satisfactory state of polish.
As he saw more of his sister in her home life, Monsieur d'Antin became convinced that the Abbé Roux, as he had at once suspected, by no means confined himself to directing her spiritual affairs. It was very evident that the Abbé managed Palazzo Acorari, and this was quite sufficient to account for his distant attitude towards a possible intruder. As a matter of fact, Monsieur d'Antin had no great desire to intrude. He intended to benefit by the accident of having a sister who was also a Roman princess with a comfortable dowry, and he had very quickly made up his mind not to attempt to interfere with the Abbé Roux so long as that ecclesiastic did not attempt to interfere with him.