Mediterranean Nights by Dennis Wheatley Page A

waiter brought me a letter. It was from the Contessa Neroni, asking me to call on her that afternoon at her
palazzo
in the town.
    Nero’s mother, of course. I had often heard of the old lady, but never met her.
    At four o’clock I duly presented myself, not without trepidation, at the great brown-stone house. I had a pretty shrewd idea that the old lady wanted to talk to me about Nero’s affair with the Frenchwoman, and I wondered how much she knew.
    An elderly servitor, own brother to parchment-face, led me to a low room that took me back to the days of Leo X and Pietro Aretino.
    At the end of that long room were three people: a scraggy, ageless female who was stitching at a frame, a grey-haired priest who told his beads, and in the centre in a stately stiff-backed chair—an old, old woman.
    She had an eagle face, witch-like and saturnine. Her piercing eyes stripped me to the soul as I advanced up that seemingly endless length of room.
    One of the claws was held out imperiously for me to kiss, and instinctively I bowed over it as though I had stepped into another century. Then she waved me to a stool.
    When she spoke it was in a curiously musical voice.
    â€˜You are the friend of my son,’ she said. ‘Many times have I heard how you entertain him in England. On your return you convey, please, my grateful thanks to your noble mother.’
    â€˜Thank you,’ I said awkwardly. ‘Yes. Of course it’s always been a great pleasure to have Nero with us—we are all very fond of him, you know.’
    She gave me a sharp glance. ‘I had thought that—you areolder also—good influence with him. Have you met this—er—
Madame
Ribereau?’
    â€˜No,’ I admitted, ‘but Nero has told me about her.’
    â€˜That he goes to make her Contessa Neroni?’
    â€˜Yes.’
    The old eyes blazed at me out of the wrinkled face. ‘The notorious
Madame
Ribereau!—
une poule de luxe—une cocotte
! How can it be that such a woman should make wife to the Neroni? Have you not spoken sense to this mad son of mine?’
    â€˜I have,’ I told her.
    Madame Ribereau, I learned, had been installed that very afternoon at the Castello as Contessa Neroni, and the old woman trembled with anger at this insult to her house.
    Young men needed their adventures, she said; that was but natural—but how should this woman raise up children to an ancient race? Twelve years older than Nero—married already, and utterly outside the pale of the black aristocracy.
    I tried, out of loyalty to Nero, to put his case, and had it been the daughter of a local squire, or even an Italian peasant girl, I might have put it better—but a French
cocotte
, who was twelve years older than him—what could I say to support such folly?
    At last she said that, as I had already done all that I could, she must make the journey to Rome. She, the Contessa Neroni, would humble herself even to speaking with that upstart journalist, Mussolini—who, people said, controlled all things in these strange days.
    I expressed my sympathy, kissed the wrinkled claw once more, and left her.
    The next day I spent in Padua, then I went on to Venice, where I stayed three nights; after that I came south to Florence, and it was there on the fourth and last day of my stay that I ran into Hummy Pringle.
    I had never cared much for Hummy, although I had known him since he was a fat, unhealthy boy. His father had left him enough money to indulge his tastes in what he chose to call painting, and failing to receive any recognition in England, he had settled some years before in Florence.
    I was sitting outside a café, and he bustled up to me at once:
    â€˜Hello… hello! just fancy seeing you here—how too positively thrilling!’
    I offered him a vermouth, but he wouldn’t drink. ‘My figure, yeu know’—but he sat down quickly, avid for gossip of our mutual