I begged her to hand it to her mistress, having first written on
it in Italian the words, "Could you very kindly see a gentleman,
an American, for a moment?" The little maid was not hostile,
and I reflected that even that was perhaps something gained.
She colored, she smiled and looked both frightened and pleased.
I could see that my arrival was a great affair, that visits
were rare in that house, and that she was a person who would
have liked a sociable place. When she pushed forward the heavy
door behind me I felt that I had a foot in the citadel.
She pattered across the damp, stony lower hall and I followed
her up the high staircase--stonier still, as it seemed--
without an invitation. I think she had meant I should wait
for her below, but such was not my idea, and I took up my
station in the sala. She flitted, at the far end of it,
into impenetrable regions, and I looked at the place with my
heart beating as I had known it to do in the dentist's parlor.
It was gloomy and stately, but it owed its character almost
entirely to its noble shape and to the fine architectural doors--
as high as the doors of houses--which, leading into the
various rooms, repeated themselves on either side at intervals.
They were surmounted with old faded painted escutcheons,
and here and there, in the spaces between them, brown pictures,
which I perceived to be bad, in battered frames, were suspended.
With the exception of several straw-bottomed chairs with
their backs to the wall, the grand obscure vista contained
nothing else to minister to effect. It was evidently
never used save as a passage, and little even as that.
I may add that by the time the door opened again through
which the maidservant had escaped, my eyes had grown used
to the want of light.