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Updated: June 19, 2025
And there, floating on the water as it seems, there is a palace like a palace in Fairyland, a palace of white marble, all stately colonnades and terraces, yet looking, somehow, as light as if it were built of the sea's foam. This is one of the palaces the summer palace of the Counts of Sampaolo.
She spoke in bated accents, and made a grave face, as if to miss tea were to miss a function sacrosanct. Anthony laughed, and they turned back. "It's a bit of a coincidence," he remarked presently, "that, coming from Sampaolo, you should just have chanced to take a house at Craford." "Nothing could be simpler," said Susanna.
"The natural beauty of Sampaolo is to my thinking unparalleled. At a distance, as your ship approaches it, Sampaolo lies on the horizon like a beautiful soft cloud, all vague rose-colours and purples, a beautiful soft pinnacle of cloud.
I dare say Anthony was still digesting his letter from Miss Sandus, when it was followed by the somewhat startling visit of Commendatore Fregi; and perhaps he was still under the impression of that, when, in the afternoon, he was summoned from a game of tennis, to receive the communication which I transcribe below, from the Contessa di Sampaolo.
But Anthony fell back, aghast. "Sampaolo?" he cried. "Yes," said she, quietly. "Oh, I say!" He writhed, he groaned. "That is too much. Really!" "That is my condition," said Susanna. Her mouth was firm. "You don't mean it you can't mean it." He frowned his incredulity. "I mean it literally," she persisted. "You must make a journey to Sampaolo." "But what's the sense of it?" he besought her.
"For the Antipope must be in wilful personal rebellion; while your cousin is what she is, quite independently of her own will perhaps in spite of it. Imagine me, for instance, in her place me," she smiled, "the sole legitimist in Sampaolo. What could I do? I find myself in possession of stolen goods. I would, if I could, restore them at once to their rightful owner.
She was actress enough to look unconscious and unconcerned, as she pronounced the name of Sampaolo. Her eyes gazed dreamily far away, as if they could behold an air-vision of her island. At the same time, I suspect, they kept a vigilant side-watch on Anthony. Did Anthony give never so slightly perceptible a start? Did his eyes quicken? Did he colour a little?
"We will wish the young lady no such dreary fate," laughed Anthony. "Fortunately for her, she is not troubled by your scruples." "How do you know she is n't?" asked Susanna. "We can safely take it for granted," said he. "Besides, you have told me so yourself." "I have told you so ?" she puzzled. "You have told me that there is but one legitimist in Sampaolo.
A count in possession, and a count over the water, an usurper and a pretender." "Exactly," she assented, "save that the Count in possession happens to be a Countess the grand-daughter of the original usurper, whose male line is extinct. Oh, the history of Sampaolo has been highly coloured. A writer in some English magazine once described it as a patchwork of melodrama and opera-bouffe.
As a consequence of that, the Valdeschi have always had a great fondness for England, and have often married English wives English Catholics, of course. An Englishwoman was Countess of Sampaolo when the end came, the patchwork end." "Ah, yes," said Anthony, "the patchwork end tell me about that."
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