two men in the outer hall, all day long, and sometimes four, ready to
announce visitors or to answer questions, as the case might be. It was
deserted now, a great, dismal, paved hall, already dingy with dust.
One of the box-benches was open, and the tail of a footman's livery
greatcoat which had been thrown in carelessly, hung over the edge and
dragged on the marble floor.

The Baroness realized that the porter had spoken the truth and that
all the servants had left the house, as the rats leave a sinking ship.
One must really have seen an old ship sink in harbour to know how the
rats look, black and grey, fat and thin, old and young, their tiny
beads of eyes glittering with fright as they scurry up the hatches and
make for every deck port and scupper, scrambling and tumbling over
each other till they flop into the water and swim away, racing for
safety, each making a long forked wake on the smooth surface, with a
steady quick ripple like the tearing of thin paper into strips.

The strong middle-aged woman who stood alone in the empty hall knew
nothing of sinking vessels or the ways of rats, but she had known
incidentally of more than one catastrophe like this, in the course of
her husband's ascendant career, and somehow he had always been
mysteriously connected with each one. An evil-speaking old diplomatist
had once said that he remembered Baron Volterra as a pawn-broking
dealer in antiquities, in Florence, thirty years earlier; there was
probably no truth in the story, but after Volterra was elected a
Senator of the Kingdom, a member of the opposition had alluded to it
with piquant irony and the result had been the exchange of several
bullets at forty paces, whereby honour was satisfied without
bloodshed. The seconds, who were well disposed to both parties, alone
knew how much or how little powder there was in the pistols, and they