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'Oh h h h! exclaimed the countess. 'I was sure you had heard of her, continued Mrs Proudie. 'I don't know anything about her husband. They do say that some man named Neroni is still alive. I believe she did marry such a man abroad, but I do not at all know who or what he was. 'Ah h h h! said the countess, shaking her head with much intelligence, as every additional 'h' fell from her lips.
Upon the demise of Cosmo, his son Piero, being heir to the wealth and government of his father, called to his assistance Diotisalvi Neroni, a man of great influence and the highest reputation, in whom Cosmo reposed so much confidence that just before his death he recommended Piero to be wholly guided by him, both with regard to the government of the city and the management of his fortune.
He had consorted with idolaters round the altars of Baal, and therefore a sore punishment had come upon him. He then thought of the Signora Neroni, and his soul within him was full of sorrow. He had an inkling a true inkling that he was a wicked, sinful man, but it led him in no right direction; he could admit no charity in his heart.
And if Neroni, in his many-sided activity, eventually put aside sculpture for painting, it was merely because, as he was wont to say, a figure must needs look real when it is solid and you can walk round it; but to make men and women rise out of a flat canvas or plastered wall, and stand and move as if alive, is truly the work of a god.
At the present moment Mr. Thorne, aetat. fifty, was over head and ears in love at first sight with the Signora Madeline Vesey Neroni, nata Stanhope. Nevertheless, he was sufficiently master of himself to offer his arm with all propriety to Lady De Courcy, and the countess graciously permitted herself to be led to the tent.
The first who came and the last to leave was Mr. Arabin. This was the second visit he had paid to Madame Neroni since he had met her at Ullathorne. He came, he knew not why, to talk about, he knew not what. But, in truth, the feelings which now troubled him were new to him, and he could not analyse them.
Mr Slope followed her, and young Stanhope lost the occasion. Madame Neroni, when she was left alone, could not help pondering much on the singular interview she had had with this singular man. Not a word that she had spoken to him had been intended by her to be received as true, and yet he had answered her in the very spirit of truth. He had done so, and she had been aware that he had done so.
For an absolute contempt for the artistic value of such miraculous images did not, in the mind of Neroni, throw any doubt on their authenticity; in the same way that the passion for antiquity, the hankering after Pagan beliefs, did not probably interfere with the orthodoxy of so many of the humanists.
The quotation from Virgil, and the allusion to the statues of the immortal gods, shows that Neroni must have written these lines in the later part of his career, when already under the influence of that humanist Filarete, who played so important a part in his life, and when possessed already by those notions which brought him to so strange and fearful an end.
Then he made up his mind not to think of her any more, and went on thinking of her till he was almost in a state to drown himself in the little brook which was at the bottom of the archdeacon's grounds. And ever and again his mind would revert to the Signora Neroni, and he would make comparisons between her and Eleanor Bold, not always in favour of the latter.
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