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The Villa Madama was probably never inhabited, for it was certainly never quite finished, and the grand staircase was not rebuilt after Cardinal Pompeo Colonna set fire to the house.
But not so with Hillard. At last! "To the Campo, Pompeo. Mr. Hillard, will you kindly follow? I would speak to you alone, since there is no escape." Her tone chilled Hillard's ardor somewhat. But to speak to her again, and mayhap see her face! "Doesn't want the police," whispered Merrihew. "I told you so. Look out for yourself."
'One of these rascals, said Mazenta, 'was the sculptor Pompeo Leoni, who used to make the bronzes for the Escorial, and he pretended that he would obtain an appointment for Melzi at Milan, if he would get back the thirteen volumes for King Philip's new library in Spain. Leoni got possession of most of the books and kept them in his own cabinet.
The Princess was probably not aware of that fact, for she had always lived in sublime ignorance of everything connected with money, even since her husband's death; and when good Pompeo Sassi tried to explain things, telling her that she was quite ruined, she never listened to what he said. If the family had debts, why did he not borrow money and pay them?
"I am, sir," I answered modestly, "the great-grandson of the unfortunate Marco Antonio Casanova, secretary to Cardinal Pompeo Colonna, who died of the plague in Rome, in the year 1528, under the pontificate of Clement VII." The words were scarcely out of my lips when he embraced me, calling me his cousin, but we all thought that Doctor Gennaro would actually die with laughter, for it seemed impossible to laugh so immoderately without risk of life.
"And you spend your time in good works, in the village, of course, and in edifying conversation with Don Teodoro. Yes I see! As you put it at first, it was a little startling, but I understand it better now. You understand it, Pompeo, do you not? It is quite clear, now."
Never did Pompeo take a tourist down the Grand Canal that he did not exalt in his best Italian and French the beauties of yonder empty palace. Had he not spent his youth in the service of the family? It was only of late years that Pompeo had become a public gondolier, with his posts in the stand fronting the Hotel de l'Europe. "A-oel! Look out!" he called suddenly.
In the Region of Parione stands the famous Cancelleria, a masterpiece of Bramante's architecture, celebrated for many events in the later history of Rome, and successively the princely residence of several cardinals, chief of whom was that strong Pompeo Colonna, the ally of the Emperor Charles the Fifth, who was responsible for the sacking of Rome by the Constable of Bourbon, who ultimately ruined the Holy League, and imposed his terrible terms of peace upon Clement the Seventh, a prisoner in Sant' Angelo.
In spite of the windy weather there was Signor Pompeo Stromboli, the tenor, as broad as any two ordinary men, in a fur coat of the most terribly expensive sort, bringing an enormous box of chocolates with his best wishes; and there was the great German dramatic barytone, Herr Tiefenbach, who sang 'Amfortas' better than any one, and was a true musician as well as a man of culture, and he brought Margaret a book which he insisted that she must read on the voyage, called The Genesis of the Tone Epos; and there was that excellent and useful little artist, Fraeulein Ottilie Braun, who never had an enemy in her life, who was always ready to sing any part creditably at a moment's notice if one of the leading artists broke down, and who was altogether one of the best, kindest, and least conceited human beings that ever joined an opera company.
Pompeo Stromboli was really the most sweet-tempered creature in the world, and called during the afternoon with the idea of apologising for having eclipsed her, but was told that she was resting and would see no one.
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