CHAPTER I.


Don Orsino Saracinesca is of the younger age and lives in the younger
Rome, with his father and mother, under the roof of the vast old palace
which has sheltered so many hundreds of Saracinesca in peace and war,
but which has rarely in the course of the centuries been the home of
three generations at once during one and twenty years.

The lover of romance may lie in the sun, caring not for the time of day
and content to watch the butterflies that cross his blue sky on the way
from one flower to another. But the historian is an entomologist who
must be stirring. He must catch the moths, which are his facts, in the
net which is his memory, and he must fasten them upon his paper with
sharp pins, which are dates.

By far the greater number of old Prince Saracinesca's contemporaries are
dead, and more or less justly forgotten. Old Valdarno died long ago in
his bed, surrounded by sons and daughters. The famous dandy of other
days, the Duke of Astrardente, died at his young wife's feet some three
and twenty years before this chapter of family history opens. Then the
primeval Prince Montevarchi came to a violent end at the hands of his
librarian, leaving his English princess consolable but unconsoled,
leaving also his daughter Flavia married to that other Giovanni
Saracinesca who still bears the name of Marchese di San Giacinto; while
the younger girl, the fair, brown-eyed Faustina, loved a poor
Frenchman, half soldier and all artist. The weak, good-natured Ascanio
Bellegra reigns in his father's stead, the timidly extravagant master of
all that wealth which the miser's lean and crooked fingers had consigned
to a safe keeping. Frangipani too, whose son was to have married