The Heart of Rome | Page 2

wagged from side to side.
"There are no servants upstairs," he said. "There is only the family."
"No servants? Are you crazy?"
"Oh, no!" answered the man meditatively. "I do not think I am mad.
The servants all went away last night after dinner, with their belongings.
There were only sixteen left, men and women, for I counted them."
"Do you mean to say--" The Baroness stopped in the middle of her
question, staring in amazement.
The porter now nodded, as solemnly as he had before shaken his head.
"Yes. This is the end of the house of Conti."
Then he looked at her as if he wished to be questioned, for he knew that
she was not really a great lady, and guessed that in spite of her
magnificent superiority and coldness she was not above talking to a
servant about her friends.
"But they must have somebody," she said. "They must eat, I suppose!
Somebody must cook for them. They cannot starve!"
"Who knows? Who knows? Perhaps they will starve."
The porter evidently took a gloomy view of the case.
"But why did the servants go away in a body?" asked the Baroness,
descending from her social perch by the inviting ladder of curiosity.

"They never were paid. None of us ever got our wages. For some time
the family has paid nobody. The day before yesterday, the telephone
company sent a man to take away the instrument. Then the electric
light was cut off. When that happens, it is all over."
The man had heard of the phenomenon from a colleague.
"And there is nobody? They have nobody at all?"
The Baroness had always been rich, and was really trying to guess what
would happen to people who had no servants.
"There is my wife," said the porter. "But she is old," he added
apologetically, "and the palace is big. Can she sweep out three hundred
rooms, cook for two families of masters and dress the Princess's hair?
She cannot do it."
This was stated with gloomy gravity. The Baroness also shook her head
in sympathy.
"There were sixteen servants in the house yesterday," continued the
porter. "I remember when there were thirty, in the times of the old
Prince."
"There would be still, if the family had been wise," said the Baroness
severely. "Is your wife upstairs?"
"Who knows where she is?" enquired the porter by way of answer, and
with the air of a man who fears that he may never see his wife again.
"There are three hundred rooms. Who knows where she is?"
The Baroness was a practical woman by nature and by force of
circumstances; she made up her mind to go upstairs and see for herself
how matters stood. The name of Donna Clementina might not just now
carry much weight beside those of the patronesses of a complicated
charitable organization; in fact the poor lady must be in a position to
need charity herself rather than to dispense it to others. But the
Baroness had a deep-rooted prejudice in favour of the old aristocracy,

and guessed that it would afterwards be counted to her for
righteousness if she could be the first to offer boundless sympathy and
limited help to the distressed family.
It would be thought distinctly smart, for instance, if she should take the
Princess, or even one of the unmarried daughters, to her own house for
a few days, as a refuge from the sordid atmosphere of debt and ruin,
and beyond the reach of vulgar creditors, one of whom, by the way, she
knew to be her own excellent husband. 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? That was what he
was paid for doing, after all. It was true that he had not been paid for a
year or two, but that was a wretched detail. Economy? Had not the
Princess given up her second maid, as an extravagance? What more did
the man expect?
The Baroness knew all this and reflected upon what she knew, as she
deliberately got out of her cab at the foot of the grand staircase.
"I will go upstairs myself," she said.
"Padrona," observed the porter, standing aside with his broom.
He explained in a single word that she was at liberty to go upstairs if
she chose, that it was not of the least use to go, and that he would not
be responsible for any disappointment if she were afterwards not
pleased.