I went all over the palace with childlike delight. It was one of the finest in all Venice. The furniture and the hangings, fairly glistening with newness, had been copied from antique models, so that the paintings on the ceilings and the old-fashioned architecture harmonized perfectly with the new accessories. The luxury that we bourgeois and people of the North affect is so paltry, so vulgar, so slovenly, that I had never dreamed of such elegance. I walked through the vast galleries as through an enchanted palace; all the objects about me were of strange shapes, of unfamiliar aspect; I wondered if I were dreaming, or if I were really the mistress and queen of all those marvellous things. Moreover, that feudal magnificence was a fresh source of enchantment to me. I had never realized the pleasure or the advantage of being noble. In France people no longer know what it is, in Belgium they have never known. Here in Italy the few remaining nobles are still proud and fond of display; the palaces are not demolished, but are allowed to crumble away. Between those walls laden with trophies and escutcheons, beneath those ceilings on which the armorial bearings of the family were painted, face to face with Leoni's ancestors painted by Titian and Veronese, some grave and stern in their long cloaks, others elegant and gracious in their black satin doublets, I understood that pride of rank which may be so attractive and so becoming when it does not adorn a fool. All this illustrious environment was so suited to Leoni that it would be impossible for me, even to-day, to think of him as a plebeian. He was the fitting descendant of those men with black beards and alabaster hands, of the type that Van Dyck has immortalized. He had their eagle-like profile, their delicate and refined features, their tall stature, their eyes, at once mocking and kindly. If those portraits could have walked they would have walked as he did; if they had spoken, they would have had his voice. "Can it be," I said, throwing my arms about him, "that it was you, my lord, Signor Leone Leoni, who were in that chalet among the goats and hens the other day, with a pickaxe over your shoulder and a blouse on your back? Was it you that lived that life for six months, with a nameless, witless girl, who has no other merit than her love for you? And you mean to keep me with you, you will love me always, and tell me so every morning, as at the chalet? Oh, it is a too exalted and too happy lot for me; I had not aspired so high, and it terrifies me at the same time that it intoxicates me." "Do not be frightened," he said, with a smile, "be my companion and my queen forever. Now, come to supper; I have two guests to present to you. Arrange your hair and make yourself pretty; and when I call you my wife, don't open your eyes as if you were surprised."