Princesses are usually practical people, but we Americans, whose ideas
of princesses are founded rather on fairy tales than on history, allow
ourselves to be shocked and surprised when we discover this trait in
them.
The Princess di Sangatano was practical; she was noble, dignified,
unselfish, patient, subtle, still extremely handsome at thirty-nine,
and--or but--practical. She had just married her young daughter
excellently. She had not done this, however, by sitting still and
being dignified and noble. She had done it by going pleasantly to the
houses of women whom she disliked; by flattering men in whom even her
subtlety found few subjects for flattery; by indorsing the policy of a
cardinal, of whose policy as a matter of fact she disapproved. Nor did
she feel that her conduct in this respect was open to criticism. On
the contrary, there was nothing which the princess viewed with a more
satisfactory sense of duty done than the marriage of her daughter.
And now she was beginning to recognize that her son must be launched
by similar methods. The launching of Raimundo was something of a
problem. He had much to recommend him; he was good-looking, gay and
sweet-tempered; he loved his mother, and was not naughtier than other
boys of his age; but he lacked the determined industry likely to make
him successful. It was impossible to consider a learned profession
for him, and even for diplomacy, in which the princess could
easily have found him a place, Raimundo was a little too impulsive.
And so his mother, working it out, came to the conclusion that a
business--a business that would like to own a young prince and would
need Raimundo's knowledge of Italians and Italy--would be the best
chance; and so, of course, she thought of America--her native land.
Yes, though few people remembered the fact, the princess had been born
in the United States. She had left it as a small child, her mother
having remarried--an Italian--and she had been brought up in Italy
thenceforth. By circumstance and environment, by marriage and religion
and choice, she had become utterly an Italian. She betrayed this by
her belief that America--commercial America--would respect and desire
a prince. And hardly had she reached this conclusion when she met
Charlotte Haines.
They met quite by accident. The princess during a short stay in Venice
was visiting her mother's old friend, the Contessa Carini-Bon. The
Carini-Bon palace, as all good sightseers know, is not on the Grand
Canal, but tucked away at the junction of two of the smaller canals.
It is a late Renaissance palace, built of the white granite that turns
blackest, and it is decorated with Turks' heads over the arches of
the windows, and contains the most beautiful tapestries in Italy.
The princess, who since the war did not commit the extravagance of
having her own gondola in Venice, had walked to the palace, through
many narrow streets over tiny bridges, and under porticos, and having
arrived at the side door was standing a minute in conversation with the
concierge--also an old friend--discussing his son who had been wounded
on the Piave, and the curse of motor boats on the Grand Canal, and the
peculiar habits of the _forestieri_, and other universal topics, when
she saw, across the empty courtyard, that a gondola had appeared at the
steps.
It was a magnificent gondola; the two men were in white with blue
sashes edged with gold fringe; blue ribbons fluttered from their
broad-brimmed hats; their oars were striped blue and white; and the
gondola itself shone with fresh black paint relieved here and there
by heavy gold. In the front there was a small bouquet of roses and
daisies in the little brass stand that carried the lamp by night. Out
of this, hardly touching the proffered arm of the gondolier, stepped
a pretty woman, her white draperies and pearls contrasting with her
smooth dark hair and alert brown eyes. She asked in execrable Italian
whether it were possible to "visitare" the _palazzo_. The concierge,
in that liquid beautiful voice which so many Italians of all classes
possess, replied that it was utterly impossible--that occasionally,
when the contessa was not in Venice, certain people bringing letters
were permitted, but at present the contessa was at home.
The lady did not understand all of this, and was not at her best when
crossed in her pursuit of ideal beauty and without a language in
which to argue the point. She kept repeating "_Non è possible?_" and
"_Perche?_" and never appearing to understand the answer, until in
despair the concierge looked pathetically at the princess. Following
his glance Charlotte, bursting with a sense that she was somehow being
done out of the rights of an American connoisseur, broke into fluent
French. Was it, she asked, really impossible to see the tapestries? How
could such things be? She was told they were the best tapestries in all
Italy; tapestries were her specialty. She knew herself in tapestries.
The princess courteously repeated the concierge's explanation; and so
these two women, born not two hundred miles away from each other in the
state of Ohio, stood for a few minutes and conversed in Venice in the
language of the boulevards. Perhaps it was some latent sense of kinship
that made the princess feel sorry for Charlotte. She told her to wait a
moment, and went on up to see the contessa.
When the first greetings were over she explained that there was a very
pretty young American woman downstairs who was bitterly disappointed at
not being able to see the tapestries.
"Good," said the contessa. "I'm delighted to hear it." She was very
old and wrinkled and bright-eyed, and she had a habit of flicking the
end of her nose with her forefinger. "These Americans--I hear their
terrible voices all day long in the canals. They have all the money in
the world and most of the energy, but they cannot have everything. They
cannot see my tapestries."
"And that is a pleasure to you?"