"There are five hundred and thirty, your lordship, and I not only know their names and all the incidents of their lives, with their precise dates, but I also know the name, age, and sex of all the children who died before their features were reproduced, to be transmitted to posterity. There have been three hundred and twenty-seven, including those born dead. I have omitted none but those that never were baptized." "That is marvellous!" said Michel; "but if I had been in your place, having such a memory, I should have preferred to learn the history of the human race rather than that of a single family." "The human race doesn't interest me," replied the majordomo, gravely. "His excellency, Prince Dionigi de Palmarosa, father of the present princess, did not entrust me with the duty of teaching his children history. But, as I loved to be occupied, and as I had much time to myself, in a house where no banquets or parties have been given for two generations, he advised me, for amusement, to make a summary of the history of his family, which was scattered through a multitude of manuscript folio volumes, which you can see in the library at Palmarosa, and all of which I examined and studied to the last letter." "And did it really amuse you?" "Much, Master Pier-Angelo," the majordomo solemnly replied to the old painter's jocose question. "I see," rejoined Michel, ironically, "that your lordship is no ordinary steward, and that you are far more cultivated than your duties require." "My duties, while not brilliant, have always been very pleasant," replied the majordomo, "even in Prince Dionigi's day, and he was pleasant to nobody but me. He had much consideration, almost friendship for me, because I was an open book which he could consult at any hour concerning his ancestors. As for the princess, his daughter, as she is kind to everybody, I cannot but be happy with her. I do almost exactly as I choose, and there are only three things about her that grieve me, and those are her giving up her family gallery, her never consulting her genealogical tree, and her not deigning to investigate the science of heraldry. And yet it is a delightful science, and one which ladies used to cultivate with success." "And now it is a part of the stock in trade of decorators and gilders of wood," said Michel, laughing anew. "They are attractive ornaments of which the bright colors and the flavor of the days of chivalry please the eye and the imagination; that is all."