The residence of the Montevarchi was very different.  Narrow strips of carpet were stretched in straight lines across cold marble floors, from one door to another.  Instead of open fires in the huge chimney-places, pans of lighted charcoal were set in the dim, empty rooms.  Half a dozen halls were furnished alike.  Each had three marble tables and twelve straight-backed chairs ranged against the walls, the only variety being that some were covered with red damask and some with green.  Vast old-fashioned mirrors, set in magnificent frames built into the wall, reflected vistas of emptiness and acres of cold solitude.  Nor were the rooms where the family met much better.  There were more tables and more straight-backed chairs there than in the outer halls, but that was all.  The drawing-room had a carpet, which for many years had been an object of the greatest concern to the prince, who never left Rome for the months of August and September until he had assured himself that this valuable object had been beaten, dusted, peppered, and sewn up in a linen case as old as itself, that is to say, dating from a quarter of a century back.  That carpet was an extravagance to which his father had been driven by his English daughter-in-law; it was the only one of which he had ever been guilty, and the present head of the family meant that it should last his lifetime, and longer too, if care could preserve it.  The princess herself had been made to remember for five and twenty years that since she had obtained a carpet she must expect nothing else in the way of modern improvements.  It was the monument of a stupendous energy which she had expended entirely in that one struggle, and the sight of it reminded her of her youth.  Long ago she had submitted once and for ever to the old Roman ways, and though she knew that a very little saved from the expense of maintaining a score of useless servants and a magnificent show equipage would suffice to make at least one room in the house comfortable for her use, she no longer sighed at the reflection, but consoled herself with making her children put up with the inconveniences she herself had borne so long and so patiently.

Prince Montevarchi’s private room was as comfortless as the rest of the house.  Narrow, high, dim, carpetless, insufficiently warmed in winter by a brazier of coals, and at present not warmed at all, though the weather was chilly; furnished shabbily with dusty shelves, a writing-table, and a few chairs with leather seats, musty with an ancient mustiness which seemed to be emitted by the rows of old books and the moth-eaten baize cover of the table—­the whole place looked more like the office of a decayed notary than the study of a wealthy nobleman of ancient lineage.  The old gentleman himself entered the room a few seconds after San Giacinto had been ushered in, having slipped out to change his coat when his visitor was announced.  It was a fixed principle of his life to dress as well as his neighbours when they could see him, but to wear threadbare garments whenever he could do so unobserved.  He greeted San Giacinto with a grave dignity which contrasted strangely with the weakness and excitement he had shown on the previous night.