Countess's fortune--that fortune appraised by rumor, with its habitual
exaggeration, now at twenty, now at thirty, millions. She had in reality
two hundred and fifty thousand francs' income. But as, in 1873, Count
Michel Steno, her husband, died, leaving only debts, a partly ruined
palace at Venice and much property heavily mortgaged, the amount of that
income proved the truth of the title, "superior woman," applied by her
friends to Alba's mother. Her friends likewise added: "She has been the
mistress of Hafner, who has aided her with his financial advice," an
atrocious slander which was so much the more false as it was before ever
knowing the Baron that she had begun to amass her wealth. This is how
she managed it:

At the close of 1873, when, as a young widow, living in retirement in the
sumptuous and ruined dwelling on the Grand Canal, she was struggling with
her creditors, one of the largest bankers in Rome came to propose to her
a very advantageous scheme. It dealt with a large piece of land which
belonged to the Steno estate, a piece of land in Rome, in one of the
suburbs, between the Porta Salara and the Porta Pia, a sort of village
which the deceased Cardinal Steno, Count Michel's uncle, had begun to lay
out. After his demise, the land had been rented in lots to kitchen-
gardeners, and it was estimated that it was worth about forty centimes a
square metre. The financier offered four francs for it, under the
pretext of establishing a factory on the site. It was a large sum of
money. The Countess required twenty-four hours in which to consider,
and, at the end of that time, she refused the offer, which won for her
the admiration of the men of business who knew of the refusal. In 1882,
less than ten years later, she sold the same land for ninety francs a
metre. She saw, on glancing at a plan of Rome, and in recalling the
history of modern Italy, first, that the new masters of the Eternal City
would centre all their ambition in rebuilding it, then that the portion