CHAPTER III

The next day the public sale-room of the Via Sistina was thronged with fashionable people, come to look on at the famous contest.

It was raining hard; the light in the low-roofed damp rooms was dull and gray. Along the walls were ranged various pieces of carved furniture, several large diptychs and triptychs of the Tuscan school of the fourteenth century; four pieces of Flemish tapestry representing the Story of Narcissus hung from ceiling to floor; Metaurensian majolicas occupied two long shelves; stuffs—for the most part ecclesiastical—lay spread out on chairs or heaped up on tables; antiquities of the rarest kind—ivories, enamels, crystals, engraved gems, medals, coins, breviaries, illuminated manuscripts, silver of delicate workmanship were massed together in high cabinets behind the auctioneer's table. A peculiar musty odour, arising from the clamminess of the atmosphere and this collection of ancient things, pervaded the air.

When Andrea Sperelli entered the room with the Princess di Ferentino, he looked about him rapidly with a secret tremor—Is she here? he said to himself.

She was there, seated at the table between the Cavaliere Davila and Don Filippo del Monte. Before her on the table lay her gloves and her muff, to which a little bunch of violets was fastened. She held in her hand a little bas-relief in silver, attributed to Caradosso Foppa, which she was examining with great attention. Each article passed from hand to hand along the table while the auctioneer proclaimed its merits in a loud voice, those standing behind the line of chairs leaning over to look.[30]

[30]

The sale began.

'Make your bids, gentlemen! make your bids!' cried the auctioneer from time to time.

Some amateur encouraged by this cry bid a higher sum with his eye on his competitors. The auctioneer raised his hammer.

'Going—Going—Gone!'

He rapped the table. The article fell to the last bidder. A murmur went round the assemblage, then the bidding recommenced. The Cavaliere Davila, a Neapolitan gentleman of gigantic stature and almost femininely gentle manners, a noted collector and connoisseur of majolica, gave his opinion on each article of importance. Three lots in this sale of the Cardinal's effects were really of 'superior' quality: the Story of Narcissus, the rock-crystal goblet, and an 

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