Page:The Writings of Prosper Merimee-Volume 5.djvu/104

82 him go into the Aldobrandi palace. I continued on my way, not much flattered at being taken for a budding Monsignor.

In spite of the Marquise's warnings, perhaps even because of them, my next most pressing concern was to find out the lodging of a painter I knew, and I spent an hour with him at his studio talking over the legitimate or dubious ways of enjoying oneself that Rome could provide. I led him to the subject of the Aldobrandi.

The Marquise, he said, after being excessively frivolous became highly devotional when she recognized that she was too old for further conquests. Her eldest son was a fool, who spent his time hunting and receiving the rents of the farms on his vast estates. They were going the right way to make an idiot of the second son, Don Ottavio; he was to be a cardinal some day. Until then he was given up to the Jesuits. He never went out alone; he was forbidden to look at a woman, or to take a single step without a priest at his heels, who had educated him for God's service, and who, after having been the Marquise's last amico, now ruled her house with almost despotic authority.

The next day Don Ottavio, followed by the Abbe Negroni, he who had taken me for his