I was fascinated to hear him speak of his mistress so simply and casually; later I suspected that it was done for effect, for me.

‘How is she?’

‘Cara? Well, I hope. She will be back with us tomorrow. She is visiting some American friends at a villa on the Brenta canal. Where shall we dine? We might go to the Luna, but it is filling up with English now. Would you be too dull at home? Cara is sure to want to go out tomorrow, and the cook here is really quite excellent.’

He had moved away from the window and now stood in the full evening sunlight, with the red damask of the walls behind him. It was a noble face, a controlled one, just, it seemed, as he planned it to be; slightly weary, slightly sardonic, slightly voluptuous. He seemed in the prime of life; it was odd to think that he was only a few years younger than my father.

We dined at a marble table in the windows; everything was either of marble, or velvet, or dull, gilt gesso, in this house. Lord Marchmain said, ‘And how do you plan your time here? Bathing or sight-seeing?’

‘Some sight-seeing, anyway,’ I said.

‘Cara will like that – she, as Sebastian will have told you, is your hostess here. You can’t do both, you know. Once you go to the Lido there is no escaping – you play backgammon, you get caught at the bar, you get stupefied by the sun. Stick to the churches.’

‘Charles is very keen on painting,’ said Sebastian.

‘Yes?’ I noticed the hint of deep boredom which I knew so well in my own father. ‘Yes? Any particular Venetian painter?’

‘Bellini,’ I answered rather wildly.

‘Yes? Which?’

‘I’m afraid I didn’t know there were two of them.’

‘Three to be precise. You will find that in the great ages painting was very much a family business. How did you leave England?’

‘It has been lovely,’ said Sebastian.

‘Was it? Was it? It has been my tragedy that I abominate the English countryside. I suppose it is a disgraceful thing to inherit great responsibilities and to be entirely indifferent to them. I am all the Socialists would have me be, and a great stumbling-block to my own party. Well, my elder son will change all that, I’ve no doubt, if they leave him anything to inherit….Why, I wonder, are Italian sweets always thought to be so good? There was always an Italian pastry-cook at Brideshead until my father’s day. He had an Austrian, so much better. And now I suppose there is some British matron with beefy forearms.’

After dinner we left the palace by the street door and walked through a maze of bridges and squares and alleys, to Florian’s for coffee, and watched the grave crowds crossing and recrossing under the campanile. ‘There is nothing quite like a Venetian crowd,’ said Lord Marchmain. ‘The city is crawling with Anarchists, but an American woman tried to sit here the other night with bare shoulders and they drove her away by coming to stare at her, quite silently; they were like circling gulls coming back and back to her, until she left. Our countrymen are much less dignified when they attempt to express moral disapproval.’