At this point Anitchkoff must have caught my raised eyebrows, for he added contritely, “It was odd for Mantovani to give away a Giorgione.  You’re quite right.  I was ridiculously young.”  “You may imagine,” he pursued, “that the flight of the Giorgione to the Pyrenees only embittered my curiosity.  For years I might have seen it—­shabbily to be sure—­by merely opening a door when Mantovani was occupied, now it had departed to another planet.  Remember those were my ’prentice days when I lived obscurely and absolutely without acquaintance in the Marquesa’s world.  She seemed as inaccessible as the Grand Lama.  But you know how things will come about in least expected ways:  Jane Morrison, quite the only human being who could possibly have known both the Marquesa and me, actually gave me a very good letter of introduction.  Then almost oppressive good luck, came a note from her mountain Castle, telling that the Chatelaine would be glad to receive me whenever my travels led me her way.  She mentioned our common enthusiasm for the Venetians and graciously wanted my opinion on the Giorgione, which the enemies of Mantovani, her friend and my spiritual father, as she called him, had spitefully slandered.  Such slanders had never happened to reach my ears but I was already eager to refute them.

“It was two years later that I made the visit on the way to the Prado.  All day long the diligence rattled up hill away from the railroad, and it was dusk before I saw the Del Puente stronghold on its crag, evidently a half hour’s walk from the miserable fonda where the diligence dropped me.  It was no hour to present an introduction, but I bribed a boy to take the letter up that night.  He returned, disappointingly, without an answer.  The next morning wore on intolerably amid a noisy squalor that I could not escape until my summons came.  It was early afternoon before an equerry arrived on muleback bearing the Marquesa’s note.  She was enchanted to meet me but desolated at the unlucky time of my arrival.  Tomorrow she crossed the Pyrenees for Paris and hoped my route might lie that way.  Meanwhile her home was wholly dismantled for the winter, and the ordinary hospitalities were denied her.  But she counted on the pleasure of seeing me at four; we might at least chat, drink a cup of tea, and pay our homage to Mantovani’s ‘Zorzi.’  Nothing could have been more charming or more tantalising.  As I toiled up towards the Del Puente barbican I could feel the precious afternoon light dwindling.  Breathless I set the castle bell a-jangling with something like despair.

“Heavy doors opened in front of me as I passed the sallyport and the grassgrown courtyard.  At the entrance a majordomo in shabby but fairly regal livery greeted me and conducted me through empty corridors and up a massive staircase.  The castle was indeed dismantled—­apparently had been in that condition from all time.  As my superb guide halted before a door which, exceptionally, was curtained,