I was pleased with my little lecture, and so was Jeanne. I could tell it by her surprised expression, and by the looks she cast toward her father, who was still taking notes, to see whether she might go on with her first lesson in art.
He smiled in a friendly way, which meant: "I'm happy here, my dear, thank you; 'va piano va sano'."
This was as good as permission. We went on our way, saluting, as we passed, Tintoretto and Titian, Veronese and Andrea Solari, old Cimabue, and a few early paintings of angular virgins on golden backgrounds.
Jeanne was no longer bored.
"And is this," she would say, "another Venetian, or a Lombard, or a Florentine?"
We soon completed the round of the first room, and made our way into the gallery beyond, devoted to sculpture. The marble gods and goddesses, the lovely fragments of frieze or cornice from the excavations at Rome, Pompeii, or Greece, had but a moderate interest for Mademoiselle Charnot. She never gave more than one glance to each statue, to some none at all.
We soon came to the end of the gallery, and the door which gave access into the second room of paintings.
Suddenly Jeanne gave an exclamation of surprise.
"What is that?" she said.
Beneath the large and lofty window, fanned on the outside by leafy branches, a wooden panel, bearing an inscription, stood upright against the wall. The words were painted in black on a white ground, and arranged with considerable skill, after the style of the classic epitaphs which the Italians still cultivate.
I drew aside the folds of a curtain: "It is one of those memorial tablets, Mademoiselle, such as people hang up in this part of the country upon the church doors on the day of the funeral. It means: "To thee, Rafaella Dannegianti--who, aged twenty years and few months--having fully experienced the sorrows and illusions of this world--on January 6--like an angel longing for its heavenly home--didst wing thy way to God in peace and happiness--the clergy of Desioand the laborers and artificers of the noble house of Dannegianti--tender these last solemn offices."
"This Rafaella, then, was the Count's daughter?"
"His only child, a girl lovely and gracious beyond rivalry."
"Oh, of course, beyond rivalry. Are not all only daughters lovely and perfect when once they are dead?" she replied with a bitter smile. "They have their legend, their cult, and usually a flattering portrait. I am surprised that Rafaella's is not here. I imagine her portrait as representing a tall girl, with long, well-arched eyebrows, and brown eyes--"