Through the spick and span wide, modern streets they rolled to the Barbiondi palace. Milan was gayly picturesque in her springtime magic of light and colour. An impress of the Gothic feeling met the eye in buildings that recalled where they did not typify the pointed architecture of the north. They passed a procession of priests and acolytes following a crozier that flashed the sunlight. Here and there, at a street corner, a public porter slept peacefully while awaiting a call to work. For a minute or two they were in the busy movement of Via Manzoni. Cavalry officers in bright uniforms lounged at the outdoor tables of the cafés, or dragged their sabres lazily amid the throngs of civilians. Then they entered a quieter way, that yielded vistas of courtyards with frescoed walls, arcades clad in climbing greenery, playing fountains; and at the next turning they were in sight of Palazzo Barbiondi. For two months artisans had been at work restoring the ancient family seat to life and splendour. In point of splendour Tarsis had done somewhat more than recall the past. As they approached the arched gateway Don Riccardo exclaimed at sight of the newly-coloured iron palings tipped with gilt. The fountain in the court was playing. Out of the pool rose an Apollo Musagetes, and from his crown a sparkling shower shot down in diverging lines to symbolise the sun’s rays, or--as the Greeks had it--the arrows of Apollo. The side walls of the court were frescoed with the Barbiondi crown and the “Lux in tenebras lucet” of the once haughty and powerful house. A corps of domestics in livery of white and olive were waiting, lined on either side of the main entrance. The fountain statues and all the marble ornamenture of the court had been despoiled of their yellow _patina_, and showed once more in native white. The façade of the palace--accounted one of the noblest in the North--had been spared by the renovator, but its grand staircase, rising from one side of the wide portico, and its carved balustrade, were as white as St. Bernard’s peak. Everywhere that the artisans could turn back the clock they had done so by dint of scouring and scraping, painting and stuccoing, chiselling and carving, tearing out and building in. Don Riccardo paused at the opening to the grand staircase and looked up at the armorial bearings of his house done in stone. “Bacco!” he exclaimed, “we are the first Barbiondi to set foot here for more than a hundred years.” It was in the Duke’s heart to denounce the fungous nobility and shop-keeping snobs who had from time to time violated his ancestral home with their occupancy; but in the presence of Tarsis he bridled his tongue.