He had had the entire winter in which to observe the interior of that house, similar to hundreds of others in Vienna, Madrid, Florence, Berlin, anywhere, indeed, where the mistress of the house applies herself to realizing an ideal of Parisian luxury.  He had amused himself many an evening in separating from the almost international framework local features, those which distinguished the room from others of the same kind.  No human being succeeds in being absolutely factitious in his home or in his writings.  The author had thus noted that the salon bore a date, that of the Countess’s last journey to Paris in 1880.  It was to be seen in the plush and silk of the curtains.  The general coloring, in which green predominated, a liberty egotistical in so brilliant a blonde, had too warm a tone and betrayed the Italian.  Italy was also to be found in the painted ceiling and in the frieze which ran all around, as well as in several paintings scattered about.  There were two panels by Moretti de Brescia in the second style of the master, called his silvery manner, on account of the delicate and transparent fluidity of the coloring; a ‘Souper chez le Pharisien’ and a ‘Jesus ressuscite sur le rivage’, which could only have come from one of the very old palaces of a very ancient family.  Dorsenne knew all that, and he knew, too, for what reasons he found almost empty at that time of the year the hall so animated during the entire winter, the hall through which he had seen pass a veritable carnival of visitors:  great lords, artists, political men, Russians and Austrians, English and French—­pellmell.  The Countess was far from occupying in Rome the social position which her intelligence, her fortune and her name should have assured her.  For, having been born a Navagero, she combined on her escutcheon the cross of gold of the Sebastien Navagero who was the first to mount the walls of Lepante, with the star of the grand Doge Michel.

But one particular trait of character had always prevented her from succeeding on that point.  She could not bear ennui nor constraint, nor had she any vanity.  She was positive and impassioned, in the manner of the men of wealth to whom their meditated—­upon combinations serve to assure the conditions of their pleasures.  Never had Madame Steno displayed diplomacy in the changes of her passions, and they had been numerous before the arrival of Gorka, to whom she had remained faithful two years, an almost incomprehensible thing!  Never had she, save in her own home, observed the slightest bounds when there was a question of reaching the object of her desire.  Moreover, she had not in Rome to support her any member of the family to which she belonged, and she had not joined either of the two sets into which, since 1870, the society of the city was divided.  Of too modern a mind and of a manner too bold, she had not been received by the admirable woman who reigns at the Quirinal, and who had managed to gather around her an atmosphere of such noble elevation.