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Updated: June 16, 2025
Anyhow, at a respectful distance. The parroco, who is also his sort of intendant, tells me he practically never comes to Sant' Alessina." "Good easy man," quoth she. "Yes, I certainly supposed you were his tenant-in-fee, at the least. You have an air." And her bob of the head complimented him upon it. "Oh, we Marquises of Carabas!" cried John, with a flourish. She regarded him doubtfully.
"I wonder," said John, "that the people who own it never live here." "The Prince of Zelt-Neuminster?" said she. "No, he doesn't like the Italian Government. Since Lombardy passed from Austria to Italy, the family have entirely given up staying at Sant' Alessina." "In those circumstances," said John, "practical-minded people, I should think, would get rid of the place."
"Oh," said she, laughing, "the Prince, in some ways, is practical-minded enough. He has this great collection of Italian paintings, which, by Italian law, he mayn't remove from Italian soil; and if he were to get rid of Sant' Alessina, where could he house them? In other ways, though, he is perhaps not so practical.
"A private detective, a female detective, whom, the next time you come to Sant' Alessina, I'll introduce to you," said John. "What on earth do you mean?" said Lady Blanchemain. "The most amusing, the most adorable little detective unhung," said he. "People are all love and laughter whenever they look at her. She'll worm its inmost secrets from my sphinx's heart."
But Boltraffios, Bernardino Luinis, even a putative Giorgione, could not divert her mind from its human problem. What was he doing at Castel Sant' Alessina, the property, according to her guide-book, of an Austrian prince? Was he its tenant? He couldn't, surely, this well-dressed, high-bred, cultivated young compatriot, he couldn't be a mere employé, a steward or curator? No: probably a tenant.
Of course there are no such heretical inventions as pews in the parish church of Sant' Alessina. You sit upon orthodox rush-bottomed chairs, you kneel upon orthodox bare stones.
But a person, happily, not of his own sex, a woman, a beautiful woman; and what her presence supplied to the poetry of Sant' Alessina, making it complete, was, if you like, the Eternal Feminine. As supplied already by the painted women on the walls about him, this force had been static; as supplied by a woman who lived and breathed, it became dynamic.
"And I was thinking," Annunziata went on, "how strange it was that if you hadn't both at the same time just happened to come to Sant' Alessina, you might have lived and died and never have known each other." "Perish that thought," laughed John. "But I have sometimes thought it myself."
"Does the Prince of Zelt-Neuminster take in boarders?" she inquired, her nose in the air. "Not exactly," said John. "But the Parroco of Sant' Alessina does. I board at the presbytery." "Oh," said Lady Blanchemain, beginning to see light, while her eyebrows went up, went down. "You board at the presbytery?" "For six francs fifty a day wine included," chuckled John.
"The only difference will be a question of what constitutes the pigtail. And are you, then, remaining at Sant' Alessina?" "For the present," answered John. "Until ?" she questioned. "Oh, well, until she sends me away, or leaves herself," said he, "and so my fool's paradise achieves its inevitable end." Lady Blanchemain laughed a long, quiet laugh of amused contentment.
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