CHAPTER IV




If Baron Volterra did not choose to sell the Palazzo Conti to the
first comer, he doubtless knew his own business best, and he was not
answerable to every one for his opinion that the fine old building was
worth a good deal more than the highest offer he had yet received.
Everybody knew that the palace was for sale, and some of the attempts
made to buy it were openly discussed. A speculator had offered four
hundred thousand francs for it, a rich South American had offered half
a million; it was rumoured that the Vatican would give five hundred
and fifty thousand, provided that the timbers of the carved ceilings
were in good condition, but Volterra steadily refused to allow any of
the carvings to be disturbed in order to examine the beams. During
several days a snuffy little man with a clever face poked about with a
light in dark places between floors, trying to find out whether the
wood were sound or rotten, and asking all sorts of questions of the
old porter, and of two workmen who went with him, and who had been
employed in repairs in the palace, as their fathers had been before
them, perhaps for generations. But their answers were never quite
satisfactory, and the snuffy man disappeared to the mysterious regions
beyond the Tiber, and did not come back.

Some people, knowing the ways of the Romans, might have inferred that