Comedies and Errors

Every one who knew Rome fifteen or twenty years ago must remember Miss Belmont. She lived in the Palazzo Sebastiani a merry little old Englishwoman the business the passion of whose existence it was to receive. All the rooms of her vast apartment on the piano nobile were arranged as reception-rooms even the last of the suite in the corner of which a low divan covered by a Persian carpet with a prie-dieu beside it and a crucifix attached to the wall above was understood to serve at night as Miss Belmont's bed. Her day as indicated by her visiting-card was Thursday; but to those who stood in her good books her day was every day and—save for a brief hour in the afternoon when with the rest of Rome she drove in the Villa Borghese—all day long. Then almost every evening she gave a little dinner. I have mentioned that she was old. She was proud of her age and especially proud of not looking it. I am seventy-three she used to boast confronting you with the erect figure the bright eyes the firm cheeks of a well-preserved woman of sixty. Her rooms were filled with beautiful and precious things paintings porcelains and bronzes carvings brocades picked up in every province of the Continent the spoils of a lifetime spent in rummaging she said. All English folk who arrived in Rome decently accredited were asked to her at-homes and all good Black Italians attended them. As a loyal Black herself Miss Belmont of course knew no one in any way affiliated with the Quirinal.