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Cornelius van Koppen, an alien millionaire, not one of them found it in his heart to disapprove Count Caloveglia's action. For they all liked him. Every one liked him. They all understood his position. He was a necessitous widower with a marriageable daughter on his hands, a girl whom everybody admired for her beauty and charm of character.
He unraveled those now familiar thoroughfares and traced out, as a map, the more prominent buildings the Church, the Municipality, the old Benedictine Monastery where Duke Alfred, they say, condescendingly invited himself to dine with the monks every second month in such state and splendour that, the rich convent revenues being exhausted, His Highness was pleased to transfer his favours to the neighboring Carthusians who went bankrupt in their turn; he recognized Count Caloveglia's place and, at the furthest outskirts, the little villa Mon Repos.
Many a time he had listened to Count Caloveglia's rounded periods anent the Locri Faun. Taking his own personal experience as a guide, he had come to the conclusion that a man does not explain things quite so satisfactorily, unless he has some business in hand.
On this spot, people were given to understand, fragments of old marbles and vases had been picked up by the peasantry within the last years. Things of small worth pottery mostly; they lay about Count Caloveglia's Nepenthe courtyard and were given by him, as keepsakes, to any visitor who showed an interest in them. He attached no value to these trifles.
All of which, far from extinguishing, actually fostered that queer bachelor's feeling of reverential awe for the married state and its results. Every form of courage and success appealed to van Koppen none more than the reckless impetuosity of a man who speculates in such a delirious lottery and sometimes actually draws a prize. Such had been Count Caloveglia's portion.
They little realized what anguish of mind this step had cost him, for he concealed his true feelings under a cloak of playful worldliness. Excess of grief, he held, is an unlovely thing not meet to be displayed before men. All excess is unlovely. That was Count Caloveglia's classic point of view. Measure! Measure in everything.
In fact there was no doubt about it: van Koppen had the gifts of making himself beloved. But nobody's company was more markedly to his taste than that of Count Caloveglia. The two old men spent hours together in Caloveglia's shady courtyard, eating candied fruits, sipping home-made liqueurs of peaches or mountain-herbs and talking ever talking.
Therefore the statue had been "carried" to the vineyard in ancient times by "some young and ardent lover of art." Carried, ha, ha! His knowledge of human nature made him doubt whether the Locri Faun had ever in its life made a further journey than to Caloveglia's shady courtyard from that mysterious, dusty shed at the back of his house. Or the Demeter either.
They did not hit it off, somehow; they seemed to drift further apart every time they met. Each was preoccupied with his own thoughts. The bishop was more taciturn than usual; the interview with his cousin had not been quite a success. Denis, after a while, made another effort. He spoke of some of Count Caloveglia's antiquities and, one thing leading to another, told Mr.
Strolling along he espied a familiar courtyard that gave upon the street; Count Caloveglia's place. On an impulse he entered the massive portal which stood invitingly ajar. Two elderly gentlemen sat discoursing in the shade of the fig tree; there was no difficulty in recognizing the stranger as Mr. van Koppen, the American millionaire, a frequent visitor, they said, of Count Caloveglia.
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