“If that is your attitude, you will understand, Madam, that I must beg you henceforth to use the back staircase when you go to look after your plants.” “Do you suppose it’s any pleasure to me to come into your old hole?” “Then, pray, for the future, refrain from coming into it.” And, in order to add emphasis to his words with the eloquence of gesture, he seized his records and tore them into little bits. * * * * * For a fortnight, he had said; in reality, his rats had been kept fasting for only four days. And his irritation, no doubt, worked itself off with this exaggeration of his grievance, for at table he was able to show an unruffled brow; he pushed equanimity even to the point of holding out to his spouse the right hand of reconciliation. For he was still more anxious than Veronica that the religious and proper Baragliouls should not be offered the spectacle of disagreements, which they would certainly lay to the door of Anthime’s opinions. At about five o’clock Veronica changed her morning gown for a black cloth coat and skirt and started for the station to meet Marguerite and Julius, who were due to arrive in Rome at six o’clock. Anthime went to shave; he had consented to exchange his neckerchief for a black bow; that must be sufficient; he disliked ceremony and saw no reason why his sister-in-law’s presence should make him forswear his alpaca coat, his white waistcoat, spotted with blue, his duck trousers and his comfortable black leather slippers without heels, which he used to wear even out of doors, and which were excusable because of his lameness. He picked up the torn bits of paper, pieced them together, and carefully copied them out while he was waiting for the Baragliouls. III The Baragliouls (the _gl_ is pronounced Italian fashion, as in _Broglie_ [the duke of] and in _miglionnaire_) came originally from Parma. It was a Baraglioul (Alessandro) who, in 1514, married as his second wife Filippa Visconti, a few months after the annexation of the Duchy to the Papal States. Another Baraglioul (also Alessandro) distinguished himself at the battle of Lepanto, and was assassinated in 1589, in circumstances which still remain mysterious. It would be easy, though not very interesting, to trace the family fortunes up till 1807, the year in which France took over the Duchy of Parma and in which Robert de Baraglioul, Julius’s grandfather, settled at Pau. In 1828 Charles X bestowed on him the title of Count--a title which was destined to be borne with honour by his third son (the two elder died in infancy), Juste-Agénor, whose keen intelligence and diplomatic talents shone with such brilliancy and carried off such triumphant successes in the ambassadorial career.