BOOK II.

THE NEW LIGHT.

Zu neuen Ufern lockt ein neuer Tag.

2.1.

One afternoon of April in the year 1774, Odo Valsecca, riding down the

hillside below the church of the Superga, had reined in his horse at a

point where a group of Spanish chestnuts overhung the way. The air was

light and pure, the shady turf invited him, and dismounting he bid his

servant lead the horses to the wayside inn half way down the slope.

The spot he had chosen, though secluded as some nook above the gorge of

Donnaz, commanded a view of the Po rolling at his feet like a flood of

yellowish metal, and beyond, outspread in clear spring sunshine, the

great city in the bosom of the plain. The spectacle was fair enough to

touch any fancy: brown domes and facades set in new-leaved gardens and

surrounded by vineyards extending to the nearest acclivities;

country-houses glancing through the fresh green of planes and willows;

monastery-walls cresting the higher ridges; and westward the Po winding

in sunlit curves toward the Alps.

Odo had lost none of his sensitiveness to such impressions; but the sway

of another mood turned his eye from the outstretched beauty of the city

to the vernal solitude about him. It was the season when old memories of

Donnaz worked in his blood; when the banks and hedges of the fresh

hill-country about Turin cheated him with a breath of budding

beech-groves and the fragrance of crushed fern in the glens of the high

Pennine valleys. It was a mere waft, perhaps, from some clod of loosened

earth, or the touch of cool elastic moss as he flung himself face

downward under the trees; but the savour, the contact filled his

nostrils with mountain air and his eyes with dim-branched distances. At

Donnaz the slow motions of the northern spring had endeared to him all

those sweet incipiencies preceding the full choral burst of leaf and

flower: the mauve mist over bare woodlands, the wet black gleams in

frost-bound hollows, the thrust of fronds through withered bracken, the

primrose-patches spreading like pale sunshine along wintry lanes. He had

always felt a sympathy for these delicate unnoted changes; but the

feeling which had formerly been like the blind stir of sap in a plant

was now a conscious sensation that groped for speech and understanding.

He had grown up among people to whom such emotions were unknown. The old

Marquess's passion for his fields and woods was the love of the

agriculturist and the hunter, not that of the naturalist or the poet;

and the aristocracy of the cities regarded the country merely as so much

soil from which to draw their maintenance. The gentlefolk never absented

themselves from town but for a few weeks of autumn, when they went to

their villas for the vintage, transporting thither all the diversions of

city life and venturing no farther afield than the pleasure-grounds that

were but so many open-air card-rooms, concert-halls and theatres. Odo's

tenderness for every sylvan function of renewal and decay, every

shifting of light and colour on the flying surface of the year, would

have been met with the same stare with which a certain enchanting

Countess had received the handful of wind-flowers that, fresh from a

sunrise on the hills, he had laid one morning among her toilet-boxes.

The Countess Clarice had stared and laughed, and every one of his

acquaintance, Alfieri even, would have echoed her laugh; but one man at

least had felt the divine commotion of nature's touch, had felt and

interpreted it, in words as fresh as spring verdure, in the pages of a

volume that Odo now drew from his pocket.

"I longed to dream, but some unexpected spectacle continually distracted

me from my musings. Here immense rocks hung their ruinous masses above

my head; there the thick mist of roaring waterfalls enveloped me; or

some unceasing torrent tore open at my very feet an abyss into which the

gaze feared to plunge. Sometimes I was lost in the twilight of a thick

wood; sometimes, on emerging from a dark ravine, my eyes were charmed by

the sight of an open meadow...Nature seemed to revel in unwonted

contrasts; such varieties of aspect had she united in one spot. Here was

an eastern prospect bright with spring flowers, while autumn fruits

ripened to the south and the northern face of the scene was still locked

in wintry frosts...Add to this the different angles at which the peaks

took the light, the chiaroscuro of sun and shade, and the variations of

light resulting from it at morning and evening...sum up the impressions

I have tried to describe and you will be able to form an idea of the

enchanting situation in which I found myself...The scene has indeed a

magical, a supernatural quality, which so ravishes the spirit and senses

that one seems to lose all exact notion of one's surroundings and

identity."

This was a new language to eighteenth-century readers. Already it had

swept through the length and breadth of France, like a spring storm-wind

bursting open doors and windows, and filling close candle-lit rooms with

wet gusts and the scent of beaten blossoms; but south of the Alps the

new ideas travelled slowly, and the Piedmontese were as yet scarce aware

of the man who had written thus of their own mountains. It was true

that, some thirty years earlier, in one of the very monasteries on which

Odo now looked down, a Swiss vagrant called Rousseau had embraced the

true faith with the most moving signs of edification; but the rescue of

Helvetian heretics was a favourite occupation of the Turinese nobility

and it is doubtful if any recalled the name of the strange proselyte who

had hastened to signalise his conversion by robbing his employers and

slandering an innocent maid-servant. Odo in fact owed his first

acquaintance with the French writers to Alfieri, who, in the intervals

of his wandering over Europe, now and then reappeared in Turin laden

with the latest novelties in Transalpine literature and haberdashery.

What his eccentric friend failed to provide, Odo had little difficulty

in obtaining for himself; for though most of the new writers were on the

Index, and the Sardinian censorship was notoriously severe, there was

never yet a barrier that could keep out books, and Cantapresto was a

skilled purveyor of contraband dainties. Odo had thus acquainted himself

with the lighter literature of England and France; and though he had

read but few philosophical treatises, was yet dimly aware of the new

standpoint from which, north of the Alps, men were beginning to test the

accepted forms of thought. The first disturbance of his childish faith,

and the coincident reading of the Lettres Philosophiques, had been

followed by a period of moral perturbation, during which he suffered

from that sense of bewilderment, of inability to classify the phenomena

of life, that is one of the keenest trials of inexperience. Youth and

nature had their way with him, however, and a wholesome reaction of

indifference set in. The invisible world of thought and conduct had been

the frequent subject of his musings; but the other, tangible world was

close to him too, spreading like a rich populous plain between himself

and the distant heights of speculation. The old doubts, the old

dissatisfactions, hung on the edge of consciousness; but he was too

profoundly Italian not to linger awhile in that atmosphere of careless

acquiescence that is so pleasant a medium for the unhampered enjoyment

of life. Some day, no doubt, the intellectual curiosity and the moral

disquietude would revive; but what he wanted now were books which

appealed not to his reason but to his emotions, which reflected as in a

mirror the rich and varied life of the senses: books that were warm to

the touch, like the little volume in his hand.

For it was not only of nature that the book spoke. Amid scenes of such

rustic freshness were set human passions as fresh and natural: a great

romantic love, subdued to duty, yet breaking forth again and again as

young shoots spring from the root of a felled tree. To

eighteenth-century readers such a picture of life was as new as its

setting. Duty, in that day, to people of quality, meant the observance

of certain fixed conventions: the correct stepping of a moral minuet; as

an inner obligation, as a voluntary tribute to Diderot's "divinity on

earth," it had hardly yet drawn breath. To depict a personal relation so

much purer and more profound than any form of sentiment then in fashion,

and then to subordinate it, unflinchingly, to the ideal of those larger

relations that link the individual to the group--this was a stroke of

originality for which it would be hard to find a parallel in modern

fiction. Here at last was an answer to the blind impulses agrope in

Odo's breast--the loosening of those springs of emotion that gushed

forth in such fresh contrast to the stagnant rills of the sentimental

pleasure-garden. To renounce a Julie would be more thrilling than--

Odo, with a sigh, thrust the book in his pocket and rose to his feet. It

was the hour of the promenade at the Valentino and he had promised the

Countess Clarice to attend her. The old high-roofed palace of the French

princess lay below him, in its gardens along the river: he could figure,

as he looked down on it, the throng of carriages and chairs, the

modishly dressed riders, the pedestrians crowding the footpath to watch

the quality go by. The vision of all that noise and glitter deepened the

sweetness of the woodland hush. He sighed again. Suddenly voices sounded

in the road below--a man's speech flecked with girlish laughter. Odo

hung back listening: the girl's voice rang like a bird-call through his

rustling fancies. Presently she came in sight: a slender black-mantled

figure hung on the arm of an elderly man in the sober dress of one of

the learned professions--a physician or a lawyer, Odo guessed. Their

being afoot, and the style of the man's dress, showed that they were of

the middle class; their demeanour, that they were father and daughter.

The girl moved with a light forward flowing of her whole body that

seemed the pledge of grace in every limb: of her face Odo had but a

bright glimpse in the eclipse of her flapping hat-brim. She stood under

his tree unheeded; but as they rose abreast of him the girl paused and

dropped her companion's arm.

"Look! The cherry flowers!" she cried, and stretched her arms to a white

gush of blossoms above the wall across the road. The movement tilted

back her hat, and Odo caught her small fine profile, wide-browed as the

head on some Sicilian coin, with a little harp-shaped ear bedded in dark

ripples.

"Oh," she wailed, straining on tiptoe, "I can't reach them!"

Her father smiled. "May temptation," said he philosophically, "always

hang as far out of your reach."

"Temptation?" she echoed.

"Is it not theft you're bent on?"

"Theft? This is a monk's orchard, not a peasant's plot."

"Confiscation, then," he humorously conceded.

"Since they pay no taxes on their cherries they might at least," she

argued, "spare a few to us poor taxpayers."

"Ah," said her father, "I want to tax their cherries, not to gather

them." He slipped a hand through her arm. "Come, child," said he, "does

not the philosopher tell us that he who enjoys a thing possesses it? The

flowers are yours already!"

"Oh, are they?" she retorted. "Then why doesn't the loaf in the baker's

window feed the beggar that looks in at it?"

"Casuist!" he cried and drew her up the bend of the road.

Odo stood gazing after them. Their words, their aspect, seemed an echo

of his reading. The father in his plain broadcloth and square-buckled

shoes, the daughter with her unpowdered hair and spreading hat, might

have stepped from the pages of the romance. What a breath of freshness

they brought with them! The girl's cheek was clear as the

cherry-blossoms, and with what lovely freedom did she move! Thus Julie

might have led Saint Preux through her "Elysium." Odo crossed the road

and, breaking one of the blossoming twigs, thrust it in the breast of

his uniform. Then he walked down the hill to the inn where the horses

waited. Half an hour later he rode up to the house where he lodged in

the Piazza San Carlo.

In the archway Cantapresto, heavy with a nine years' accretion of fat,

laid an admonishing hand on his bridle.

"Cavaliere, the Countess's black boy--"

"Well?"

"Three several times has battered the door down with a missive."

"Well?"

"The last time, I shook him off with the message that you would be there

before him."

"Be where?"

"At the Valentino; but that was an hour ago!"

Odo slipped from the saddle.

"I must dress first. Call a chair; or no--write a letter for me first.

Let Antonio carry it."

The ex-soprano, wheezing under the double burden of flesh and

consequence, had painfully laboured after Odo up the high stone flights

to that young gentleman's modest lodgings, and they stood together in a

study lined with books and hung with prints and casts from the antique.

Odo threw off his dusty coat and called the servant to remove his boots.

"Will you read the lady's letters, cavaliere?" Cantapresto asked,

obsequiously offering them on a lacquered tray.

"No--no: write first. Begin 'My angelic lady'--"

"You began the last letter in those terms, cavaliere," his scribe

reminded him with suspended pen.

"The devil! Well, then--wait. 'Throned goddess'--"

"You ended the last letter with 'throned goddess.'"

"Curse the last letter! Why did you send it?" Odo sprang up and slipped

his arms into the dress-tunic his servant had brought him. "Write

anything. Say that I am suddenly summoned by--"

"By the Count Alfieri?" Cantapresto suggested.

"Count Alfieri? Is he here? He has returned?"

"He arrived an hour ago, cavaliere. He sent you this Moorish scimitar

with his compliments. I understand he comes recently from Spain."

"Imbecile, not to have told me before! Quick, Antonio--my gloves, my

sword." Odo, flushed and animated, buckled his sword-belt with impatient

hands. "Write anything--anything to free my evening. Tomorrow

morning--tomorrow morning I shall wait on the lady. Let Antonio carry

her a nosegay with my compliments. Did you see him Cantapresto? Was he

in good health? Does he sup at home? He left no message? Quick, Antonio,

a chair!" he cried with his hand on the door.

Odo had acquired, at twenty-two, a nobility of carriage not incompatible

with the boyish candour of his gaze, and becomingly set off by the

brilliant dress-uniform of a lieutenant in one of the provincial

regiments. He was tall and fair, and a certain languor of complexion,

inherited from his father's house, was corrected in him by the vivacity

of the Donnaz blood. This now sparkled in his grey eye, and gave a glow

to his cheek, as he stepped across the threshold, treading on a sprig of

cherry-blossom that had dropped unnoticed to the floor.

Cantapresto, looking after him, caught sight of the flowers and kicked

them aside with a contemptuous toe. "I sometimes think he botanises," he

murmured with a shrug. "The Lord knows what queer notions he gets out of

all these books!"

2.2.

As an infusion of fresh blood to Odo were Alfieri's meteoric returns to

Turin. Life moved languidly in the strait-laced city, even to a young

gentleman a-tiptoe for adventure and framed to elicit it as the

hazel-wand draws water. Not that vulgar distractions were lacking. The

town, as Cantapresto had long since advised him, had its secret

leniencies, its posterns opening on clandestine pleasure; but there was

that in Odo which early turned him from such cheap counterfeits of

living. He accepted the diversions of his age, but with a clear sense of

their worth; and the youth who calls his pleasures by their true name

has learned the secret of resisting them.

Alfieri's coming set deeper springs in motion. His follies and

extravagances were on a less provincial scale than those of Odo's daily

associates. The breath of a freer life clung to him and his allusions

were so many glimpses into a larger world. His political theories were

but the enlargement of his private grievances, but the mere play of

criticism on accepted institutions was an exercise more novel and

exhilirating than the wildest ride on one of his half-tamed

thorough-breds. Still chiefly a man of pleasure, and the slave, as

always, of some rash infatuation, Alfieri was already shaking off the

intellectual torpor of his youth; and the first stirrings of his

curiosity roused an answering passion in Odo. Their tastes were indeed

divergent, for to that external beauty which was to Odo the very bloom

of life, Alfieri remained insensible; while of its imaginative

counterpart, its prolongation in the realm of thought and emotion, he

had but the most limited conception. But his love of ringing deeds woke

the chivalrous strain in Odo, and his vague celebration of Liberty, that

unknown goddess to whom altars were everywhere building, chimed with the

other's scorn of oppression and injustice. So far, it is true, their

companionship had been mainly one of pleasure; but the temper of both

gave their follies that provisional character which saves them from

vulgarity.

Odo, who had slept late on the morning after his friend's return, was

waked by the pompous mouthing of certain lines just then on every lip in

Italy:--

Meet was it that, its ancient seats forsaking,

An Empire should set forth with dauntless sail,

And braving tempests and the deep's betrayal,

Break down the barriers of inviolate worlds--

That Cortez and Pizarro should esteem

The blood of man a trivial sacrifice

When, flinging down from their ancestral thrones

Incas and Mexicans of royal line,

They wrecked two kingdoms to refresh thy palate--

They were the verses in which the abate Parini, in his satire of The

Morning, apostrophizes the cup of chocolate which the lacquey presents

to his master. Cantapresto had in fact just entered with a cup of this

beverage, and Alfieri, who stood at his friend's bedside with unpowdered

locks and a fashionable undress of Parisian cut, snatching the tray from

the soprano's hands presented it to Odo in an attitude of mock

servility.

The young man sprang up laughing. It was the fashion to applaud Parini's

verse in the circles at which his satire was aimed, and none recited his

mock heroics with greater zest than the young gentlemen whose fopperies

he ridiculed. Odo's toilet was indeed a rite almost as elaborate as that

of Parini's hero; and this accomplished, he was on his way to fulfil the

very duty the poet most unsparingly derides: the morning visit of the

cicisbeo to his lady; but meanwhile he liked to show himself above the

follies of his class by joining in the laugh against them. When he

issued from the powder-room in his gold-laced uniform, with scented

gloves and carefully-adjusted queue, he presented the image of a young

gentleman so clearly equal to the most flattering emergencies that

Alfieri broke into a smile of half-ironical approval. "I see, my dear

cavaliere, that it were idle to invite you to try one of the new Arabs I

have brought with me from Spain, since it is plain other duties engage

you; but I come to lay claim to your evening."

Odo hesitated. "The Queen holds a circle this evening," he said.

"And her lady-in-waiting is in attendance?" returned Alfieri. "And the

lady-in-waiting's gentleman-in-waiting also?"

Odo made an impatient movement. "What inducements do you offer?" said he

carelessly.

Alfieri stepped close and tapped him on the sleeve. "Meet me at ten

o'clock at the turn of the lane behind the Corpus Domini. Wear a cloak

and a mask, and leave this gentleman at home with a flask of Asti." He

glanced at Cantapresto.

Odo hesitated a moment. He knew well enough where such midnight turnings

led, and across the vision evoked by his friend's words a girl's face

flitted suddenly.

"Is that all?" he said with a shrug. "You find me, I fear, in no humour

for such exploits."

Alfieri smiled. "And if I say that I have promised to bring you?"

"Promised--?"

"To one as chary of exacting such pledges as I of giving them. If I say

that you stake your life on the adventure, and that the stake is not too

great for the reward--?"

His sallow face had reddened with excitement, and Odo's forehead

reflected the flush. Was it possible--? But the thought set him tingling

with disgust.

"Why, you say little," he cried lightly, "at the rate at which I value

my life."

Alfieri turned on him. "If your life is worthless; make it worth

something!" he exclaimed. "I offer you the opportunity tonight."

"What opportunity?"

"The sight of a face that men have laid down their lives to see."

Odo laughed and buckled on his sword. "If you answer for the risk, I

agree to take it," said he. "At ten o'clock then, behind the Corpus

Domini."

If the ladies whom gallant gentlemen delight to serve could guess what

secret touchstones of worth these same gentlemen sometimes carry into

the adored presence, many a handsome head would be carried with less

assurance, and many a fond exaction less confidently imposed. If, for

instance, the Countess Clarice di Tournanches, whose high-coloured image

reflected itself so complacently in her Venetian toilet-glass, could

have known that the Cavaliere Odo Valsecca's devoted glance saw her

through the medium of a countenance compared to which her own revealed

the most unexpected shortcomings, she might have received him with less

airy petulance of manner. But how could so accomplished a mistress doubt

the permanence of her rule? The Countess Clarice, in singling out young

Odo Valsecca (to the despair of a score of more experienced cavaliers)

had done him an honour that she could no more imagine his resigning than

an adventurer a throne to which he is unexpectedly raised. She was a

finished example of the pretty woman who views the universe as planned

for her convenience. What could go wrong in a world where noble ladies

lived in palaces hung with tapestry and damask, with powdered lacqueys

to wait on them, a turbaned blackamoor to tend their parrots and

monkeys, a coronet-coach at the door to carry them to mass or the

ridotto, and a handsome cicisbeo to display on the promenade? Everything

had combined to strengthen the Countess Clarice's faith in the existing

order of things. Her husband, Count Roberto di Tournanches, was one of

the King's equerries and distinguished for his brilliant career as an

officer of the Piedmontese army--a man marked for the highest favours in

a society where military influences were paramount. Passing at sixteen

from an aristocratic convent to the dreary magnificence of the Palazzo

Tournanches, Clarice had found herself a lady-in-waiting at the dullest

court in Europe and the wife of an army officer engrossed in his

profession, and pledged by etiquette to the service of another lady. Odo

Valsecca represented her escape from this bondage--the dash of romance

and folly in a life of elegant formalities; and the Countess, who would

not have sacrificed to him one of her rights as a court-lady or a nobil

donna of the Golden Book, regarded him as the reward which Providence

accords to a well-regulated conduct.

Her room, when Odo entered it on taking leave of Alfieri, was crowded,

as usual at that hour, with the hangers-on of the noble lady's lever:

the abatino in lace ruffles, handing about his latest rhymed acrostic,

the jeweller displaying a set of enamelled buckles newly imported from

Paris, and the black-breeched doctor with white bands who concocted

remedies for the Countess's vapours and megrims. These personages,

grouped about the toilet-table where the Countess sat under the hands of

a Parisian hairdresser, were picturesquely relieved against the stucco

panelling and narrow mirrors of the apartment, with its windows looking

on a garden set with mossy statues. To Odo, however, the scene suggested

the most tedious part of his day's routine. The compliments to be

exchanged, the silly verses to be praised, the gewgaws from Paris to be

admired, were all contrasted in his mind with the vision of that other

life which had come to him on the hillside of the Superga. On this mood

the Countess Clarice's sarcasms fell without effect. To be pouted at

because he had failed to attend the promenade of the Valentino was to

Odo but a convenient pretext for excusing himself from the Queen's

circle that evening. He had engaged with little ardour to join Alfieri

in what he guessed to be a sufficiently commonplace adventure; but as he

listened to the Countess's chatter about the last minuet-step, and the

relative merits of sanspareil water and oil-of-lilies, of gloves from

Blois and Vendome, his impatience hailed any alternative as a release.

Meanwhile, however, long hours of servitude intervened. The lady's

toilet completed, to the adjusting of the last patch, he must attend her

to dinner, where, placed at her side, he was awarded the honour of

carving the roast; must sit through two hours of biribi in company with

the abatino, the doctor, and half-a-dozen parasites of the noble table;

and for two hours more must ride in her gilt coach up and down the

promenade of the Valentino.

Escaping from this ceremonial, with the consciousness that it must be

repeated on the morrow, Odo was seized with that longing for freedom

that makes the first street-corner an invitation to flight. How he

envied Alfieri, whose travelling-carriage stood at the beck of such

moods! Odo's scant means forbade evasion, even had his military duties

not kept him in Turin. He felt himself no more than a puppet dancing to

the tune of Parini's satire, a puny doll condemned, as the strings of

custom pulled, to feign the gestures of immortal passions.

2.3.

The night was moonless, with cold dashes of rain, and though the streets

of Turin were well-lit no lantern-ray reached the windings of the lane

behind the Corpus Domini.

As Odo, alone under the wall of the church, awaited his friend's

arrival, he wondered what risk had constrained the reckless Alfieri to

such unwonted caution. Italy was at that time a vast network of

espionage, and the Piedmontese capital passed for one of the

best-policed cities in Europe; but even on a moonless night the law

distinguished between the noble pleasure-seeker and the obscure

delinquent whose fate it was to pay the other's shot. Odo knew that he

would probably be followed and his movements reported to the

authorities; but he was almost equally certain that there would be no

active interference in his affairs. What chiefly puzzled him was

Alfieri's insistence that Cantapresto should not be privy to the

adventure. The soprano had long been the confidant of his pupil's

escapades, and his adroitness had often been of service in intrigues

such as that on which Odo now fancied himself engaged. The place, again,

perplexed him: a sober quarter of convents and private dwellings, in the

very eye of the royal palace, scarce seeming the theatre for a light

adventure. These incongruities revived his former wonder; nor was this

dispelled by Alfieri's approach.

The poet, masked and unattended, rejoined his friend without a word; and

Odo guessed in him an eye and ear alert for pursuit. Guided by the

pressure of his arm, Odo was hurried round the bend of the lane, up a

transverse alley and across a little square lost between high shuttered

buildings. Alfieri, at his first word, gripped his arm with a backward

glance; then urged him on under the denser blackness of an arched

passage-way, at the end of which an oil-light glimmered. Here a gate in

a wall confronted them. It opened at Alfieri's tap and Odo scented wet

box-borders and felt the gravel of a path under foot. The gate was at

once locked behind them and they entered the ground-floor of a house as

dark as the garden. Here a maid-servant of close aspect met them with a

lamp and preceded them upstairs to a bare landing hung with charts and

portulani. On Odo's flushed anticipations this antechamber, which seemed

the approach to some pedant's cabinet, had an effect undeniably

chilling; but Alfieri, heedless of his surprise, had cast off cloak and

mask, and now led the way into a long conventual-looking room lined with

book-shelves. A knot of middle-aged gentlemen of sober dress and manner,

gathered about a cabinet of fossils in the centre of this apartment,

looked up at the entrance of the two friends; then the group divided,

and Odo with a start recognised the girl he had seen on the road to the

Superga.

She bowed gravely to the young men. "My father," said she, in a clear

voice without trace of diffidence, "has gone to his study for a book,

but will be with you in a moment."

She wore a dress in keeping with her manner, its black stuff folds and

the lawn kerchief crossed on her bosom giving height and authority to

her slight figure. The dark unpowdered hair drawn back over a cushion

made a severer setting for her face than the fluctuating brim of her

shade-hat; and this perhaps added to the sense of estrangement with

which Odo gazed at her; but she met his look with a smile, and instantly

the rosy girl flashed through her grave exterior.

"Here is my father," said she; and her companion of the previous day

stepped into the room with several folios under his arm.

Alfieri turned to Odo. "This, my dear Odo," said he, "is my

distinguished friend, Professor Vivaldi, who has done us the honour of

inviting us to his house." He took the Professor's hand. "I have brought

you," he continued, "the friend you were kind enough to include in your

invitation--the Cavaliere Odo Valsecca."

Vivaldi bowed. "Count Alfieri's friends," said he, "are always welcome

to my house; though I fear there is here little to interest a young

gentleman of the Cavaliere Valsecca's years." And Odo detected a shade

of doubt in his glance.

"The Cavaliere Valsecca," Alfieri smilingly rejoined, "is above his

years in wit and learning, and I answer for his interest as I do for his

discretion."

The Professor bowed again. "Count Alfieri, sir," he said, "has doubtless

explained to you the necessity that obliges me to be so private in

receiving my friends; and now perhaps you will join these gentlemen in

examining some rare fossil fish newly sent me from the Monte Bolca."

Odo murmured a civil rejoinder; but the wonder into which the sight of

the young girl had thrown him was fast verging on stupefaction. What

mystery was here? What necessity compelled an elderly professor to

receive his scientific friends like a band of political conspirators?

How above all, in the light of the girl's presence, was Odo to interpret

Alfieri's extravagant allusions to the nature of their visit?

The company having returned to the cabinet of fossils, none seemed to

observe his disorder but the young lady who was its cause; and seeing

him stand apart she advanced with a smile, saying, "Perhaps you would

rather look at some of my father's other curiosities."

Simple as the words were, they failed to restore Odo's self-possession,

and for a moment he made no answer. Perhaps she partly guessed the cause

of his commotion; yet it was not so much her beauty that silenced him,

as the spirit that seemed to inhabit it. Nature, in general so chary of

her gifts, so prone to use one good feature as the palliation of a dozen

deficiencies, to wed the eloquent lip with the ineffectual eye, had

indeed compounded her of all fine meanings, making each grace the

complement of another and every outward charm expressive of some inward

quality. Here was as little of the convent-bred miss as of the flippant

and vapourish fine lady; and any suggestion of a less fair alternative

vanished before such candid graces. Odo's confusion had in truth sprung

from Alfieri's ambiguous hints; and these shrivelling to nought in the

gaze that encountered his, constraint gave way to a sense of wondering

pleasure.

"I should like to see whatever you will show me," said he, as simply as

one child speaking to another; and she answered in the same tone, "Then

we'll glance at my father's collections before the serious business of

the evening begins."

With these words she began to lead him about the room, pointing out and

explaining the curiosities it contained. It was clear that, like many

scholars of his day, Professor Vivaldi was something of an eclectic in

his studies, for while one table held a fine orrery, a cabinet of coins

stood near, and the book-shelves were surmounted by specimens of coral

and petrified wood. Of all these rarities his daughter had a word to

say, and though her explanations were brief and without affectation of

pedantry, they put her companion's ignorance to the blush. It must be

owned, however, that had his learning been a match for hers it would

have stood him in poor stead at the moment; his faculties being lost in

the wonder of hearing such discourse from such lips. To his compliments

on her erudition she returned with a smile that what learning she had

was no merit, since she had been bred in a library; to which she

suddenly added:--"You are not unknown to me, Cavaliere; but I never

thought to see you here."

The words renewed her hearer's surprise; but giving him no time to

reply, she went on in a lower tone:--"You are young and the world is

fair before you. Have you considered that before risking yourself among

us?"

She coloured under Odo's wondering gaze, and at his random rejoinder

that it was a risk any man would gladly take without considering, she

turned from him with a gesture in which he fancied a shade of

disappointment.

By this they had reached the cabinet of fossils, about which the

interest of the other guests still seemed to centre. Alfieri, indeed,

paced the farther end of the room with the air of awaiting the despatch

of some tedious business; but the others were engaged in an animated

discussion necessitating frequent reference to the folios Vivaldi had

brought from his study.

The latter turned to Odo as though to include him in the group. "I do

not know, sir," said he, "whether you have found leisure to study these

enigmas of that mysterious Sphinx, the earth; for though Count Alfieri

has spoken to me of your unusual acquirements, I understand your tastes

have hitherto lain rather in the direction of philosophy and letters;"

and on Odo's prompt admission of ignorance, he courteously continued:

"The physical sciences seem, indeed, less likely to appeal to the

imaginative and poetical faculty in man, and, on the other hand,

religion has appeared to prohibit their too close investigation; yet I

question if any thoughtful mind can enter on the study of these curious

phenomena without feeling, as it were, an affinity between such

investigations and the most abstract forms of thought. For whether we

regard these figured stones as of terriginous origin, either mere lusus

naturae, or mineral formations produced by a plastic virtue latent in

the earth, or whether as in fact organic substances lapidified by the

action of water; in either case, what speculations must their origin

excite, leading us back into that dark and unexplored period of time

when the breath of Creation was yet moving on the face of the waters!"

Odo had listened but confusedly to the first words of this discourse;

but his intellectual curiosity was too great not to respond to such an

appeal, and all his perplexities slipped from him in the pursuit of the

Professor's thought.

One of the other guests seemed struck by his look of attention. "My dear

Vivaldi," said this gentleman, laying down a fossil, and fixing his gaze

on Odo while he addressed the Professor, "why use such superannuated

formulas in introducing a neophyte to a study designed to subvert the

very foundations of the Mosaic cosmogony? I take it the Cavaliere is one

of us, since he is here this evening: why, then, permit him to stray

even for a moment in the labyrinth of theological error?"

The Professor's deprecating murmur was cut short by an outburst from

another of the learned group, a red-faced spectacled personage in a

doctor's gown.

"Pardon me for suggesting," he exclaimed, "that the conditional terms in

which our host was careful to present his hypotheses are better suited

to the instruction of the neophyte than our learned friend's positive

assertions. But if the Vulcanists are to claim the Cavaliere Valsecca,

may not the Diluvials also have a hearing? How often must it be repeated

that theology as well as physical science is satisfied by the Diluvial

explanation of the origin of petrified organisms, whereas inexorable

logic compels the Vulcanists to own that their thesis is subversive of

all dogmatic belief?"

The first speaker answered with a gesture of disdain. "My dear doctor,

you occupy a chair in our venerated University. From that exalted

cathedra the Mosaic theory of Creation must still be expounded; but in

the security of these surroundings--the catacombs of the new faith--why

keep up the forms of an obsolete creed? As long ago as Pythagoras, man

was taught that all things were in a state of flux, without end as

without beginning, and must we still, after more than two thousand

years, pretend to regard the universe as some gigantic toy manufactured

in six days by a Superhuman Artisan, who is presently to destroy it at

his pleasure?"

"Sir," cried the other, flushing from red to purple at this assault, "I

know not on what ground you insinuate that my private convictions differ

from my public doctrine--"

But here, with a firmness tempered by the most scrupulous courtesy,

Professor Vivaldi intervened.

"Gentlemen," said he, "the discussion in which you are engaged,

interesting as it is, must, I fear, distract us from the true purpose of

our meeting. I am happy to offer my house as the asylum of all free

research; but you must remember that the first object of these reunions

is, not the special study of any one branch of modern science, but the

application of physical investigation to the origin and destiny of man.

In other words, we ask the study of nature to lead us to the knowledge

of ourselves; and it is because we approach this great problem from a

point as yet unsanctioned by dogmatic authority, that I am reluctantly

obliged"--and here he turned to Odo with a smile--"to throw a veil of

privacy over these inoffensive meetings."

Here at last was the key to the enigma. The gentlemen assembled in

Professor Vivaldi's rooms were met there to discuss questions not safely

aired in public. They were conspirators indeed, but the liberation they

planned was intellectual rather than political; though the acuter among

them doubtless saw whither such innovations tended. Meanwhile they were

content to linger in that wide field of speculation which the

development of the physical sciences had recently opened to philosophic

thought. As, at the Revival of Learning, the thinker imprisoned in

mediaeval dialectics suddenly felt under his feet the firm ground of

classic argument, so, in the eighteenth century, philosophy, long

suspended in the void of metaphysic, touched earth again and,

Antaeus-like, drew fresh life from the contact. It was clear that

Professor Vivaldi, whose very name had been unknown to Odo, was an

important figure in the learned world, and one uniting the tact and

firmness necessary to control those dissensions from which philosophy

itself does not preserve its disciples. His words calmed the two

disputants who were preparing to do battle over Odo's unborn scientific

creed, and the talk growing more general, the Professor turned to his

daughter, saying, "My Fulvia, is the study prepared?"

She signed her assent, and her father led the way to an inner cabinet,

where seats were drawn about a table scattered with pamphlets, gazettes

and dictionaries, and set out with modest refreshments. Here began a

conversation ranging from chemistry to taxation, and from the

perfectibility of man to the secondary origin of the earth's surface. It

was evident to Odo that, though the Professor's guests represented all

shades of opinion, some being clearly loth to leave the safe anchorage

of orthodoxy, while others already braved the seas of free enquiry, yet

all were at one as to the need of unhampered action and discussion.

Odo's dormant curiosity woke with a start at the summons of fresh

knowledge. Here were worlds to explore, or rather the actual world about

him, a region then stranger and more unfamiliar than the lost Atlantis

of fable. Liberty was the word on every lip, and if to some it

represented the right to doubt the Diluvial origin of fossils, to others

that of reforming the penal code, to a third (as to Alfieri) merely

personal independence and relief from civil restrictions; yet these

fragmentary conceptions seemed, to Odo's excited fancy, to blend in the

vision of a New Light encircling the whole horizon of thought. He

understood at last Alfieri's allusion to a face for the sight of which

men were ready to lay down their lives; and if, as he walked home before

dawn, those heavenly lineaments were blent in memory with features of a

mortal cast, yet these were pure and grave enough to stand for the image

of the goddess.

2.4.

Professor Orazio Vivaldi, after filling with distinction the chair of

Philosophy at the University of Turin, had lately resigned his office

that he might have leisure to complete a long-contemplated work on the

Origin of Civilisation. His house was the meeting-place of a society

calling itself of the Honey-Bees and ostensibly devoted to the study of

the classical poets, from whose pages the members were supposed to cull

mellifluous nourishment; but under this guise the so-called literati had

for some time indulged in free discussion of religious and scientific

questions. The Academy of the Honey-Bees comprised among its members all

the independent thinkers of Turin: doctors of law, of philosophy and

medicine, chemists, philologists and naturalists, with one or two

members of the nobility, who, like Alfieri, felt, or affected, an

interest in the graver problems of life, and could be trusted not to

betray the true character of the association.

These details Odo learned the next day from Alfieri; who went on to say

that, owing to the increased vigilance of the government, and to the

banishment of several distinguished men accused by the Church of

heretical or seditious opinions, the Honey-Bees had of late been obliged

to hold their meetings secretly, it being even rumoured that Vivaldi,

who was their president, had resigned his professorship and withdrawn

behind the shelter of literary employment in order to elude the

observation of the authorities. Men had not yet forgotten the fate of

the Neapolitan historian, Pietro Giannone, who for daring to attack the

censorship and the growth of the temporal power had been driven from

Naples to Vienna, from Vienna back to Venice, and at length, at the

prompting of the Holy See, lured across the Piedmontese frontier by

Charles Emmanuel of Savoy, and imprisoned for life in the citadel of

Turin. The memory of his tragic history--most of all, perhaps, of his

recantation and the "devout ending" to which solitude and persecution

had forced the freest spirit of his day--hovered like a warning on the

horizon of thought and constrained political speculation to hide itself

behind the study of fashionable trifles. Alfieri had lately joined the

association of the Honey-Bees, and the Professor, at his suggestion, had

invited Odo, for whose discretion his friend declared himself ready to

answer. The Honey-Bees were in fact desirous of attracting young men of

rank who felt an interest in scientific or economic problems; for it was

hoped that in this manner the new ideas might imperceptibly permeate the

class whose privileges and traditions presented the chief obstacle to

reform. In France, it was whispered, free-thinkers and political

agitators were the honoured guests of the nobility, who eagerly embraced

their theories and applied them to the remedy of social abuses. Only by

similar means could the ideals of the Piedmontese reformers be realised;

and in those early days of universal illusion none appeared to suspect

the danger of arming inexperienced hands with untried weapons. Utopia

was already in sight; and all the world was setting out for it as for

some heavenly picnic ground.

Of Vivaldi himself, Alfieri spoke with extravagant admiration. His

affable exterior was said to conceal the moral courage of one of

Plutarch's heroes. He was a man after the antique pattern, ready to lay

down fortune, credit and freedom in the defence of his convictions. "An

Agamemnon," Alfieri exclaimed, "who would not hesitate to sacrifice his

daughter to obtain a favourable wind for his enterprise!"

The metaphor was perhaps scarcely to Odo's taste; but at least it gave

him the chance for which he had waited. "And the daughter?" he asked.

"The lovely doctoress?" said Alfieri carelessly. "Oh, she's one of your

prodigies of female learning, such as our topsy-turvy land produces: an

incipient Laura Bassi or Gaetana Agnesi, to name the most distinguished

of their tribe; though I believe that hitherto her father's good sense

or her own has kept her from aspiring to academic honours. The beautiful

Fulvia is a good daughter, and devotes herself, I'm told, to helping

Vivaldi in his work; a far more becoming employment for one of her age

and sex than defending Latin theses before a crew of ribald students."

In this Odo was of one mind with him; for though Italy was used to the

spectacle of the Improvisatrice and the female doctor of philosophy, it

is doubtful if the character was one in which any admirer cared to see

his divinity figure. Odo, at any rate, felt a distinct satisfaction in

learning that Fulvia Vivaldi had thus far made no public display of her

learning. How much pleasanter to picture her as her father's aid,

perhaps a sharer in his dreams: a vestal cherishing the flame of Liberty

in the secret sanctuary of the goddess! He scarce knew as yet of what

his feeling for the girl was compounded. The sentiment she had roused

was one for which his experience had no name: an emotion in which awe

mingled with an almost boyish sense of fellowship, sex as yet lurking

out of sight as in some hidden ambush. It was perhaps her association

with a world so unfamiliar and alluring that lent her for the moment her

greatest charm. Odo's imagination had been profoundly stirred by what he

had heard and seen at the meeting of the Honey-Bees. That impatience

with the vanity of his own pursuits and with the injustice of existing

conditions, which hovered like a phantom at the feast of life, had at

last found form and utterance. Parini's satires and the bitter mockery

of the "Frusta Letteraria" were but instruments of demolition; but the

arguments of the Professor's friends had that constructive quality so

appealing to the urgent temper of youth. Was the world in ruins? Then

here was a plan to rebuild it. Was humanity in chains? Behold the angel

on the threshold of the prison!

Odo, too impatient to await the next reunion of the Honey-Bees, sought

out and frequented those among the members whose conversation had

chiefly attracted him. They were grave men, of studious and retiring

habit, leading the frugal life of the Italian middle-class, a life in

dignified contrast to the wasteful and aimless existence of the

nobility. Odo's sensitiveness to outward impressions made him peculiarly

alive to this contrast. None was more open than he to the seducements of

luxurious living, the polish of manners, the tacit exclusion of all that

is ugly or distressing; but it seemed to him that fine living should be

but the flower of fine feeling, and that such external graces, when they

adorned a dull and vapid society, were as incongruous as the royal

purple on a clown. Among certain of his new friends he found a

clumsiness of manner somewhat absurdly allied with an attempt at Roman

austerity; but he was fair-minded enough to see that the middle-class

doctor or lawyer who tries to play the Cicero is, after all, a more

respectable figure than the Marquess who apes Caligula or Commodus.

Still, his lurking dilettantism made him doubly alive to the elegance of

the Palazzo Tournanches when he went thither from a coarse meal in the

stuffy dining-parlour of one of his new acquaintances; as he never

relished the discourse of the latter more than after an afternoon in the

society of the Countess's parasites.

Alfieri's allusions to the learned ladies for whom Italy was noted made

Odo curious to meet the wives and daughters of his new friends; for he

knew it was only in their class that women received something more than

the ordinary conventual education; and he felt a secret desire to

compare Fulvia Vivaldi with other young girls of her kind. Learned

ladies he met, indeed; for though the women-folk of some of the

philosophers were content to cook and darn for them (and perhaps

secretly burn a candle in their behalf to Saint Thomas Aquinas or Saint

Dominick, refuters of heresy), there were others who aspired to all the

honours of scholarship, and would order about their servant-girls in

Tuscan, and scold their babies in Ciceronian Latin. Among these fair

grammarians, however, he met none that wore her learning lightly. They

were forever tripping in the folds of their doctors' gowns, and

delivering their most trivial views ex cathedra; and too often the poor

philosophers, their lords and fathers, cowered under their harangues

like frightened boys under the tongue of a schoolmaster.

It was in fact only in the household of Orazio Vivaldi that Odo found

the simplicity and grace of living for which he longed. Alfieri had

warned him not to visit the Professor too often, since the latter, being

under observation, might be compromised by the assiduity of his friends.

Odo therefore waited for some days before presenting himself, and when

he did so it was at the angelus, when the streets were crowded and a

man's comings and goings the less likely to be marked. He found Vivaldi

reading with his daughter in the long library where the Honey-Bees held

their meetings; but Fulvia at once withdrew, nor did she show herself

again during Odo's visit. It was clear that, proud of her as Vivaldi

was, he had no wish to parade her attainments, and that in her daily

life she maintained the Italian habit of seclusion; but to Odo she was

everywhere present in the quiet room with its well-ordered books and

curiosities, and the scent of flowers rising through the shuttered

windows. He was sensible of an influence permeating even the inanimate

objects about him, so that they seemed to reflect the spirit of those

who dwelt there. No room had given him this sense of companionship since

he had spent his boyish holidays in the old Count Benedetto's

apartments; but it was of another, intangible world that his present

surroundings spoke. Vivaldi received him kindly and asked him to repeat

his visit; and Odo returned as often as he thought prudent.

The Professor's conversation engaged him deeply. Vivaldi's familiarity

with French speculative literature, and with its sources in the

experiential philosophy of the English school, gave Odo his first clear

conception of the origin and tendency of the new movement. This

coordination of scattered ideas was aided by his readings in the

Encyclopaedia, which, though placed on the Index in Piedmont, was to be

found behind the concealed panels of more than one private library. From

his talks with Alfieri, and from the pages of Plutarch, he had gained a

certain insight into the Stoical view of reason as the measure of

conduct, and of the inherent sufficiency of virtue as its own end. He

now learned that all about him men were endeavouring to restore the

human spirit to that lost conception of its dignity; and he longed to

join the band of new crusaders who had set out to recover the tomb of

truth from the forces of superstition. The distinguishing mark of

eighteenth-century philosophy was its eagerness to convert its

acquisitions in every branch of knowledge into instruments of practical

beneficence; and this quality appealed peculiarly to Odo, who had ever

been moved by abstract theories only as they explained or modified the

destiny of man. Vivaldi, pleased by his new pupil's eagerness to learn,

took pains to set before him this aspect of the struggle.

"You will now see," he said, after one of their long talks about the

Encyclopaedists, "why we who have at heart the mental and social

regeneration of our countrymen are so desirous of making a concerted

effort against the established system. It is only by united action that

we can prevail. The bravest mob of independent fighters has little

chance against a handful of disciplined soldiers, and the Church is

perfectly logical in seeing her chief danger in the Encyclopaedia's

systematised marshalling of scattered truths. As long as the attacks on

her authority were isolated, and as it were sporadic, she had little to

fear even from the assaults of genius; but the most ordinary intellect

may find a use and become a power in the ranks of an organised

opposition. Seneca tells us the slaves in ancient Rome were at one time

so numerous that the government prohibited their wearing a distinctive

dress lest they should learn their strength and discover that the city

was in their power; and the Church knows that when the countless spirits

she has enslaved without subduing have once learned their number and

efficiency they will hold her doctrines at their mercy.--The Church

again," he continued, "has proved her astuteness in making faith the

gift of grace and not the result of reason. By so doing she placed

herself in a position which was well-nigh impregnable till the school of

Newton substituted observation for intuition and his followers showed

with increasing clearness the inability of the human mind to apprehend

anything outside the range of experience. The ultimate claim of the

Church rests on the hypothesis of an intuitive faculty in man. Disprove

the existence of this faculty, and reason must remain the supreme test

of truth. Against reason the fabric of theological doctrine cannot long

hold out, and the Church's doctrinal authority once shaken, men will no

longer fear to test by ordinary rules the practical results of her

teaching. We have not joined the great army of truth to waste our time

in vain disputations over metaphysical subtleties. Our aim is, by

freeing the mind of man from superstition to relieve him from the

practical abuses it entails. As it is impossible to examine any fiscal

or industrial problem without discovering that the chief obstacle to

improvement lies in the Church's countless privileges and exemptions, so

in every department of human activity we find some inveterate wrong

taking shelter under the claim of a divinely-revealed authority. This

claim demolished, the stagnant current of human progress will soon burst

its barriers and set with a mighty rush toward the wide ocean of truth

and freedom..."

That general belief in the perfectibility of man which cheered the

eighteenth-century thinkers in their struggle for intellectual liberty

coloured with a delightful brightness this vision of a renewed humanity.

It threw its beams on every branch of research, and shone like an

aureole round those who laid down fortune and advancement to purchase

the new redemption of mankind. Foremost among these, as Odo now learned,

were many of his own countrymen. In his talks with Vivaldi he first

explored the course of Italian thought and heard the names of the great

jurists, Vico and Gravina, and of his own contemporaries, Filangieri,

Verri and Beccaria. Vivaldi lent him Beccaria's famous volume and

several numbers of the "Caffe," the brilliant gazette which Verri and

his associates were then publishing in Milan, and in which all the

questions of the day, theological, economic and literary, were discussed

with a freedom possible only under the lenient Austrian rule.

"Ah," Vivaldi cried, "Milan is indeed the home of the free spirit, and

were I not persuaded that a man's first duty is to improve the condition

of his own city and state, I should long ago have left this unhappy

kingdom; indeed I sometimes fancy I may yet serve my own people better

by proclaiming the truth openly at a distance than by whispering it in

their midst."

It was a surprise to Odo to learn that the new ideas had already taken

such hold in Italy, and that some of the foremost thinkers on scientific

and economic subjects were among his own countrymen. Like all

eighteenth-century Italians of his class he had been taught to look to

France as the source of all culture, intellectual and social; and he was

amazed to find that in jurisprudence, and in some of the natural

sciences, Italy led the learning of Europe.

Once or twice Fulvia showed herself for a moment; but her manner was

retiring and almost constrained, and her father always contrived an

excuse for dismissing her. This was the more noticeable as she continued

to appear at the meetings of the Honey-Bees, where she joined freely in

the conversation, and sometimes diverted the guests by playing on the

harpsichord or by recitations from the poets; all with such art and

grace, and withal so much simplicity, that it was clear she was

accustomed to the part. Odo was thus driven to the not unflattering

conclusion that she had been instructed to avoid his company; and after

the first disappointment he was too honest to regret it. He was deeply

drawn to the girl; but what part could she play in the life of a man of

his rank? The cadet of an impoverished house, it was unlikely that he

would marry; and should he do so, custom forbade even the thought of

taking a wife outside of his class. Had he been admitted to free

intercourse with Fulvia, love might have routed such prudent counsels;

but in the society of her father's associates, where she moved, as in a

halo of learning, amid the respectful admiration of middle-aged

philosophers and jurists, she seemed as inaccessible as a young Minerva.

Odo, at first, had been careful not to visit Vivaldi too often; but the

Professor's conversation was so instructive, and his library so

inviting, that inclination got the better of prudence, and the young man

fell into the habit of turning almost daily down the lane behind the

Corpus Domini. Vivaldi, too proud to betray any concern for his personal

safety, showed no sign of resenting the frequency of these visits;

indeed, he received Odo with an increasing cordiality that, to an older

observer, might have betokened an effort to hide his apprehension.

One afternoon, escaping later than usual from the Valentino, Odo had

again bent toward the quiet quarter behind the palace. He was afoot,

with a cloak over his laced coat, and the day being Easter Monday the

streets were filled with a throng of pleasure-seekers amid whom it

seemed easy enough for a man to pass unnoticed. Odo, as he crossed the

Piazza Castello, thought it had never presented a gayer scene. Booths

with brightly-striped awnings had been set up under the arcades, which

were thronged with idlers of all classes; court-coaches dashed across

the square or rolled in and out of the palace-gates; and the Palazzo

Madama, lifting against the sunset its ivory-tinted columns and statues,

seemed rather some pictured fabric of Claude's or Bibbiena's than an

actual building of brick and marble. The turn of a corner carried him

from this spectacle into the solitude of a by-street where his own tread

was the only sound. He walked on carelessly; but suddenly he heard what

seemed an echo of his step. He stopped and faced about. No one was in

sight but a blind beggar crouching at the side-door of the Corpus

Domini. Odo walked on, listening, and again he heard the step, and again

turned to find himself alone. He tried to fancy that his ear had tricked

him; but he knew too much of the subtle methods of Italian espionage not

to feel a secret uneasiness. His better judgment warned him back; but

the desire to spend a pleasant hour prevailed. He took a turn through

the neighbouring streets, in the hope of diverting suspicion, and ten

minutes later was at the Professor's gate.

It opened at once, and to his amazement Fulvia stood before him. She had

thrown a black mantle over her head, and her face looked pale and vivid

in the fading light. Surprise for a moment silenced Odo, and before he

could speak the girl, without pausing to close the gate, had drawn him

toward her and flung her arms about his neck. In the first disorder of

his senses he was conscious only of seeking her lips; but an instant

later he knew it was no kiss of love that met his own, and he felt her

tremble violently in his arms. He saw in a flash that he was on unknown

ground; but his one thought was that Fulvia was in trouble and looked to

him for aid. He gently freed himself from her hold and tried to shape a

soothing question; but she caught his arm and, laying a hand over his

mouth, drew him across the garden and into the house. The lower floor

stood dark and empty. He followed Fulvia up the stairs and into the

library, which was also empty. The shutters stood wide, admitting the

evening freshness and a drowsy scent of jasmine from the garden.

Odo could not control a thrill of strange anticipation as he found

himself alone in this silent room with the girl whose heart had so

lately beat against his own. She had sunk into a chair, with her face

hidden, and for a moment or two he stood before her without speaking.

Then he knelt at her side and took her hands with a murmur of

endearment.

At his touch she started up. "And it was I," she cried, "who persuaded

my father that he might trust you!" And she sank back sobbing.

Odo rose and moved away, waiting for her overwrought emotion to subside.

At length he gently asked, "Do you wish me to leave you?"

She raised her head. "No," she said firmly, though her lip still

trembled; "you must first hear an explanation of my conduct; though it

is scarce possible," she added, flushing to the brow, "that you have not

already guessed the purpose of this lamentable comedy."

"I guess nothing," he replied, "save that perhaps I may in some way

serve you."

"Serve me?" she cried, with a flash of anger through her tears. "It is a

late hour to speak of service, after what you have brought on this

house!"

Odo turned pale. "Here indeed, madam," said he, "are words that need an

explanation."

"Oh," she broke forth, "and you shall have it; though I think to any

other it must be writ large upon my countenance." She rose and paced the

floor impetuously. "Is it possible," she began again, "you do not yet

perceive the sense of that execrable scene? Or do you think, by feigning

ignorance, to prolong my humiliation? Oh," she said, pausing before him,

her breast in a tumult, her eyes alight, "it was I who persuaded my

father of your discretion and prudence, it was through my influence that

he opened himself to you so freely; and is this the return you make?

Alas, why did you leave your fashionable friends and a world in which

you are so fitted to shine, to bring unhappiness on an obscure household

that never dreamed of courting your notice?"

As she stood before him in her radiant anger, it went hard with Odo not

to silence with a kiss a resentment that he guessed to be mainly

directed against herself; but he controlled himself and said quietly:

"Madam, I were a dolt not to perceive that I have had the misfortune to

offend; but when or how, I swear to heaven I know not; and till you

enlighten me I can neither excuse nor defend myself."

She turned pale, but instantly recovered her composure. "You are right,"

she said; "I rave like a foolish girl; but indeed I scarce know if I am

in my waking senses"--She paused, as if to check a fresh rush of

emotion. "Oh, sir," she cried, "can you not guess what has happened? You

were warned, I believe, not to frequent this house too openly; but of

late you have been an almost daily visitor, and you never come here but

you are followed. My father's doctrines have long been under suspicion,

and to be accused of perverting a man of your rank must be his ruin. He

was too proud to tell you this, and profiting today by his absence, and

knowing that if you came the spies would be at your heels, I resolved to

meet you at the gate, and welcome you in such a way that our enemies

should be deceived as to the true cause of your visits."

Her voice wavered on the last words, but she faced him proudly, and it

was Odo whose gaze fell. Never perhaps had he been conscious of cutting

a meaner figure; yet shame was so blent in him with admiration for the

girl's nobility and courage, that compunction was swept away in the

impulse that flung him at her feet.

"Ah," he cried, "I have been blind indeed, and what you say abases me to

earth. Yes, I was warned that my visits might compromise your father;

nor had I any pretext for returning so often but my own selfish pleasure

in his discourse; or so at least," he added in a lower voice, "I chose

to fancy--but when we met just now at the gate, if you acted a comedy,

believe me, I did not; and if I have come day after day to this house,

it is because, unknowingly, I came for you."

The words had escaped him unawares, and he was too sensible of their

untimeliness not to be prepared for the gesture with which she cut him

short.

"Oh," said she, in a tone of the liveliest reproach, "spare me this last

affront if you wish me to think the harm you have already done was done

unknowingly!"

Odo rose to his feet, tingling under the rebuke. "If respect and

admiration be an affront, madam," he said, "I cannot remain in your

presence without offending, and nothing is left me but to withdraw; but

before going I would at least ask if there is no way of repairing the

harm that my over-assiduity has caused."

She flushed high at the question. "Why, that," she said, "is in part, I

trust, already accomplished; indeed," she went on with an effort, "it

was when I learned the authorities suspected you of coming here on a

gallant adventure that I devised the idea of meeting you at the gate;

and for the rest, sir, the best reparation you can make is one that will

naturally suggest itself to a gentleman whose time must already be so

fully engaged."

And with that she made him a deep reverence, and withdrew to the inner

room.

2.5.

When the Professor's gate closed on Odo night was already falling and

the oil-lamp at the end of the arched passage-way shed its weak circle

of light on the pavement. This light, as Odo emerged, fell on a

retreating figure which resembled that of the blind beggar he had seen

crouching on the steps of the Corpus Domini. He ran forward, but the man

hurried across the little square and disappeared in the darkness. Odo

had not seen his face; but though his dress was tattered, and he leaned

on a beggar's staff, something about his broad rolling back recalled the

well-filled outline of Cantapresto's cassock.

Sick at heart, Odo rambled on from one street to another, avoiding the

more crowded quarters, and losing himself more than once in the

districts near the river, where young gentlemen of his figure seldom

showed themselves unattended. The populace, however, was all abroad, and

he passed as unregarded as though his sombre thoughts had enveloped him

in actual darkness.

It was late when at length he turned again into the Piazza Castello,

which was brightly lit and still thronged with pleasure-seekers. As he

approached, the crowd divided to make way for three or four handsome

travelling-carriages, preceded by linkmen and liveried out-riders and

followed by a dozen mounted equerries. The people, evidently in the

humour to greet every incident of the streets as part of a show prepared

for their diversion, cheered lustily as the carriages dashed across the

square; and Odo, turning to a man at his elbow, asked who the

distinguished visitors might be.

"Why, sir," said the other laughing, "I understand it is only an

Embassage from some neighbouring state; but when our good people are in

their Easter mood they are ready to take a mail-coach for Elijah's

chariot and their wives' scolding for the Gift of Tongues."

Odo spent a restless night face to face with his first humiliation.

Though the girl's rebuff had cut him to the quick, it was the vision of

the havoc his folly had wrought that stood between him and sleep. To

have endangered the liberty, the very life, perhaps, of a man he loved

and venerated, and who had welcomed him without heed of personal risk,

this indeed was bitter to his youthful self-sufficiency. The thought of

Giannone's fate was like a cold clutch at his heart; nor was there any

balm in knowing that it was at Fulvia's request he had been so freely

welcomed; for he was persuaded that, whatever her previous feeling might

have been, the scene just enacted must render him forever odious to her.

Turn whither it would, his tossing vanity found no repose; and dawn rose

for him on a thorny waste of disillusionment.

Cantapresto broke in early on this vigil, flushed with the importance of

a letter from the Countess Valdu. The lady summoned her son to dinner,

"to meet an old friend and distinguished visitor"; and a verbal message

bade Odo come early and wear his new uniform. He was too well acquainted

with his mother's exaggerations to attach much importance to the

summons; but being glad of an excuse to escape his daily visit at the

Palazzo Tournanches, he sent Donna Laura word that he would wait on her

at two.

On the very threshold of Casa Valdu, Odo perceived that unwonted

preparations were afoot. The shabby liveries of the servants had been

refurbished and the marble floor newly scoured; and he found his mother

seated in the drawing-room, an apartment never unshrouded save on the

most ceremonious occasions. As to Donna Laura, she had undergone the

same process of renovation, and with more striking results. It seemed to

Odo, when she met him sparkling under her rouge and powder, as though

some withered flower had been dipped in water, regaining for the moment

a languid semblance of its freshness. Her eyes shone, her hand trembled

under his lips, and the diamonds rose and fell on her eager bosom.

"You are late!" she tenderly reproached him; and before he had time to

reply, the double doors were thrown open, and the major-domo announced

in an awed voice: "His excellency Count Lelio Trescorre."

Odo turned with a start. To his mind, already crowded with a confusion

of thoughts, the name summoned a throng of memories. He saw again his

mother's apartments at Pianura, and the handsome youth with lace ruffles

and a clouded amber cane, who came and went among her other visitors

with an air of such superiority, and who rode beside the

travelling-carriage on the first stage of their journey to Donnaz. To

that handsome youth the gentleman just announced bore the likeness of

the finished portrait to the sketch. He was a man of about

two-and-thirty, of the middle height, with a delicate dark face and an

air of arrogance not unbecomingly allied to an insinuating courtesy of

address. His dress of sombre velvet, with a star on the breast, and a

profusion of the finest lace, suggested the desire to add dignity and

weight to his appearance without renouncing the softer ambitions of his

age.

He received with a smile Donna Laura's agitated phrases of welcome. "I

come," said he kissing her hand, "in my private character, not as the

Envoy of Pianura, but as the friend and servant of the Countess Valdu;

and I trust," he added turning to Odo, "of the Cavaliere Valsecca also."

Odo bowed in silence.

"You may have heard," Trescorre continued, addressing him in the same

engaging tone, "that I am come to Turin on a mission from his Highness

to the court of Savoy: a trifling matter of boundary-lines and customs,

which I undertook at the Duke's desire, the more readily, it must be

owned, since it gave me the opportunity to renew my acquaintance with

friends whom absence has not taught me to forget." He smiled again at

Donna Laura, who blushed like a girl.

The curiosity which Trescorre's words excited was lost to Odo in the

painful impression produced by his mother's agitation. To see her, a

woman already past her youth, and aged by her very efforts to preserve

it, trembling and bridling under the cool eye of masculine indifference,

was a spectacle the more humiliating that he was too young to be moved

by its human and pathetic side. He recalled once seeing a memento mori

of delicately-tinted ivory, which represented a girl's head, one side

all dewy freshness, the other touched with death; and it seemed to him

that his mother's face resembled this tragic toy, the side her mirror

reflected being still rosy with youth, while that which others saw was

already a ruin. His heart burned with disgust as he followed Donna Laura

and Trescorre into the dining-room, which had been set out with all the

family plate, and decked with rare fruits and flowers. The Countess had

excused her husband on the plea of his official duties, and the three

sat down alone to a meal composed of the costliest delicacies.

Their guest, who ate little and drank less, entertained them with the

latest news of Pianura, touching discreetly on the growing estrangement

between the Duke and Duchess, and speaking with becoming gravity of the

heir's weak health. It was clear that the speaker, without filling an

official position at the court, was already deep in the Duke's counsels,

and perhaps also in the Duchess's; and Odo guessed under his smiling

indiscretions the cool aim of the man who never wastes a shot.

Toward the close of the meal, when the servants had withdrawn, he turned

to Odo with a graver manner. "You have perhaps guessed, cavaliere," he

said, "that in venturing to claim the Countess's hospitality in so

private a manner, I had in mind the wish to open myself to you more

freely than would be possible at court." He paused a moment, as though

to emphasise his words; and Odo fancied he cultivated the trick of

deliberate speaking to counteract his natural arrogance of manner. "The

time has come," he went on, "when it seems desirable that you should be

more familiar with the state of affairs at Pianura. For some years it

seemed likely that the Duchess would give his Highness another son; but

circumstances now appear to preclude that hope; and it is the general

opinion of the court physicians that the young prince has not many years

to live." He paused again, fixing his eyes on Odo's flushed face. "The

Duke," he continued, "has shown a natural reluctance to face a situation

so painful both to his heart and his ambitions; but his feelings as a

parent have yielded to his duty as a sovereign, and he recognises the

fact that you should have an early opportunity of acquainting yourself

more nearly with the affairs of the duchy, and also of seeing something

of the other courts of Italy. I am persuaded," he added, "that, young as

you are, I need not point out to you on what slight contingencies all

human fortunes hang, and how completely the heir's recovery or the birth

of another prince must change the aspect of your future. You have, I am

sure, the heart to face such chances with becoming equanimity, and to

carry the weight of conditional honours without any undue faith in their

permanence."

The admonition was so lightly uttered that it seemed rather a tribute to

Odo's good sense than a warning to his inexperience; and indeed it was

difficult for him, in spite of an instinctive aversion to the man, to

quarrel with anything in his address or language. Trescorre in fact

possessed the art of putting younger men at their ease, while appearing

as an equal among his elders: a gift doubtless developed by the

circumstances of court life, and the need of at once commanding respect

and disarming diffidence.

He took leave upon his last words, declaring, in reply to the Countess's

protests, that he had promised to accompany the court that afternoon to

Stupinigi. "But I hope," he added, turning to Odo, "to continue our talk

at greater length, if you will favour me with a visit tomorrow at my

lodgings."

No sooner was the door closed on her illustrious visitor than Donna

Laura flung herself on Odo's bosom.

"I always knew it," she cried, "my dearest; but, oh, that I should live

to see the day!" and she wept and clung to him with a thousand

endearments, from the nature of which he gathered that she already

beheld him on the throne of Pianura. To his laughing reminder of the

distance that still separated him from that dizzy eminence, she made

answer that there was far more than he knew, that the Duke had fallen

into all manner of excesses which had already gravely impaired his

health, and that for her part she only hoped her son, when raised to a

station so far above her own, would not forget the tenderness with which

she had ever cherished him, or the fact that Count Valdu's financial

situation was one quite unworthy the stepfather of a reigning prince.

Escaping at length from this parody of his own sensations, Odo found

himself in a tumult of mind that solitude served only to increase.

Events had so pressed upon him within the last few days that at times he

was reduced to a passive sense of spectatorship, an inability to regard

himself as the centre of so many converging purposes. It was clear that

Trescorre's mission was mainly a pretext for seeing the Duke's young

kinsman; and that some special motive must have impelled the Duke to

show such sudden concern for his cousin's welfare. Trescorre need hardly

have cautioned Odo against fixing his hopes on the succession. The Duke

himself was a man not above five-and-thirty, and more than one chance

stood between Odo and the duchy; nor was it this contingency that set

his pulses beating, but rather the promise of an immediate change in his

condition. The Duke wished him to travel, to visit the different courts

of Italy: what was the prospect of ruling over a stagnant principality

to this near vision of the world and the glories thereof, suddenly

discovered from the golden height of opportunity? Save for a few weeks

of autumn villeggiatura at some neighbouring chase or vineyard, Odo had

not left Turin for nine years. He had come there a child and had grown

to manhood among the same narrow influences and surroundings. To be

turned loose on the world at two-and-twenty, with such an arrears of

experience to his credit, was to enter on a richer inheritance than any

duchy; and in Odo's case the joy of the adventure was doubled by its

timeliness. That fate should thus break at a stroke the meshes of habit,

should stoop to play the advocate of his secret inclinations, seemed to

promise him the complicity of the gods. Once in a lifetime, chance will

thus snap the toils of a man's making; and it is instructive to see the

poor puppet adore the power that connives at his evasion...

Trescorre remained a week in Turin; and Odo saw him daily at court, at

his lodgings, or in company. The little sovereignty of Pianura being an

important factor in the game of political equilibrium, her envoy was

sure of a flattering reception from the neighbouring powers; and

Trescorre's person and address must have commended him to the most

fastidious company. He continued to pay particular attention to Odo, and

the rumour was soon abroad that the Cavaliere Valsecca had been sent for

to visit his cousin, the reigning Duke; a rumour which, combined with

Donna Laura's confidential hints, made Odo the centre of much feminine

solicitude, and roused the Countess Clarice to a vivid sense of her

rights. These circumstances, and his own tendency to drift on the

current of sensation, had carried Odo more easily than he could have

hoped past the painful episode of the Professor's garden. He was still

tormented by the sense of his inability to right so grave a wrong; but

he found solace in the thought that his absence was after all the best

reparation he could make.

Trescorre, though distinguishing Odo by his favours, had not again

referred to the subject of their former conversation; but on the last

day of his visit he sent for Odo to his lodgings and at once entered

upon the subject.

"His Highness," said he, "does not for the present recommend your

resigning your commission in the Sardinian army; but as he desires you

to visit him at Pianura, and to see something of the neighbouring

courts, he has charged me to obtain for you a two years' leave of

absence from his Majesty's service: a favour the King has already been

pleased to accord. The Duke has moreover resolved to double your present

allowance and has entrusted me with the sum of two hundred ducats, which

he desires you to spend in the purchase of a travelling-carriage, and

such other appointments as are suitable to a gentleman of your rank and

expectations." As he spoke, he unlocked his despatch-box and handed a

purse to Odo. "His Highness," he continued, "is impatient to see you;

and once your preparations are completed, I should advise you to set out

without delay; that is," he added, after one of his characteristic

pauses, "if I am right in supposing that there is no obstacle to your

departure."

Odo, inferring an allusion to the Countess Clarice, smiled and coloured

slightly. "I know of none," he said.

Trescorre bowed. "I am glad to hear it," he said, "for I know that a man

of your age and appearance may have other inclinations than his own to

consider. Indeed, I have had reports of a connection that I should not

take the liberty of mentioning, were it not that your interest demands

it." He waited a moment, but Odo remained silent. "I am sure," he went

on, "you will do me the justice of believing that I mean no reflection

on the lady, when I warn you against being seen too often in the quarter

behind the Corpus Domini. Such attachments, though engaging at the

outset to a fastidious taste, are often more troublesome than a young

man of your age can foresee; and in this case the situation is

complicated by the fact that the girl's father is in ill odour with the

authorities, so that, should the motive of your visits be mistaken, you

might find yourself inconveniently involved in the proceedings of the

Holy Office."

Odo, who had turned pale, controlled himself sufficiently to listen in

silence, and with as much pretence of indifference as he could assume.

It was the peculiar misery of his situation that he could not defend

Fulvia without betraying her father, and that of the two alternatives

prudence bade him reject the one that chivalry would have chosen. It

flashed across him, however, that he might in some degree repair the

harm he had done by finding out what measures were to be taken against

Vivaldi; and to this end he carelessly asked:--"Is it possible that the

Professor has done anything to give offence in such quarters?"

His assumption of carelessness was perhaps overdone; for Trescorre's

face grew as blank as a shuttered house-front.

"I have heard rumours of the kind," he rejoined; "but they would

scarcely have attracted my notice had I not learned of your honouring

the young lady with your favours." He glanced at Odo with a smile. "Were

I a father," he added, "with a son of your age, my first advice to him

would be to form no sentimental ties but in his own society or in the

world of pleasure--the only two classes where the rules of the game are

understood."

2.6.

Odo had appointed to leave Turin some two weeks after Trescorre's

departure; but the preparations for a young gentleman's travels were in

those days a momentous business, and one not to be discharged without

vexatious postponements. The travelling-carriage must be purchased and

fitted out, the gold-mounted dressing-case selected and engraved with

the owner's arms, servants engaged and provided with liveries, and the

noble tourist's own wardrobe stocked with an assortment of costumes

suited to the vicissitudes of travel and the requirements of court life.

Odo's impatience to be gone increased with every delay, and at length he

determined to go forward at all adventure, leaving Cantapresto to

conclude the preparations and overtake him later. It had been agreed

with Trescorre that Odo, on his way to Pianura, should visit his

grandfather, the old Marquess, whose increasing infirmities had for some

years past imprisoned him on his estates, and accordingly about the

Ascension he set out in the saddle for Donnaz, attended only by one

servant, and having appointed that Cantapresto should meet him with the

carriage at Ivrea.

The morning broke cloudy as he rode out of the gates. Beyond the suburbs

a few drops fell, and as he pressed forward the country lay before him

in the emerald freshness of a spring rain, vivid strips of vineyard

alternating with silvery bands of oats, the domes of the walnut-trees

dripping above the roadside, and the poplars along the water-courses all

slanting one way in the soft continuous downpour. He had left Turin in

that mood of clinging melancholy which waits on the most hopeful

departures, and the landscape seemed an image of anticipations clouded

with regret. He had had a stormy but tender parting with Clarice, whose

efforts to act the forsaken Ariadne were somewhat marred by her

irrepressible pride in her lover's prospects, and whose last word had

charged him to bring her back one of the rare lap-dogs bred by the monks

of Bologna. Seen down the lengthening vista of separation even Clarice

seemed regrettable; and Odo would have been glad to let his mind linger

on their farewells. But another thought importuned him. He had left

Turin without news of Vivaldi or Fulvia, and without having done

anything to conjure the peril to which his rashness had exposed them.

More than once he had been about to reveal his trouble to Alfieri; but

shame restrained him when he remembered that it was Alfieri who had

vouched for his discretion. After his conversation with Trescorre he had

tried to find some way of sending a word of warning to Vivaldi; but he

had no messenger whom he could trust; and would not Vivaldi justly

resent a warning from such a source? He felt himself the prisoner of his

own folly, and as he rode along the wet country roads an invisible

gaoler seemed to spur beside him.

The clouds lifted at noon; and leaving the plain he mounted into a world

sparkling with sunshine and quivering with new-fed streams. The first

breath of mountain-air lifted the mist from his spirit, and he began to

feel himself a boy again as he entered the high gorges in the cold light

after sunset. It was about the full of the moon, and in his impatience

to reach Donnaz he resolved to push on after nightfall. The forest was

still thinly-leaved, and the rustle of wind in the branches and the

noise of the torrents recalled his first approach to the castle, in the

wild winter twilight. The way lay in darkness till the moon rose, and

once or twice he took a wrong turn and found himself engaged in some

overgrown woodland track; but he soon regained the high-road, and his

servant, a young fellow of indomitable cheerfulness, took the edge off

their solitude by frequent snatches of song. At length the moon rose,

and toward midnight Odo, spurring out of a dark glen, found himself at

the opening of the valley of Donnaz. A cold radiance bathed the familiar

pastures, the houses of the village along the stream, and the turrets

and crenellations of the castle at the head of the gorge. The air was

bitter, and the horses' hoofs struck sharply on the road as they trotted

past the slumbering houses and halted at the gateway through which Odo

had first been carried as a sleepy child. It was long before the

travellers' knock was answered, but a bewildered porter at length

admitted them, and Odo cried out when he recognised in the man's face

the features of one of the lads who had taught him to play pallone in

the castle court.

Within doors all were abed; but the cavaliere was expected, and supper

laid for him in the very chamber where he had slept as a lad. The sight

of so much that was strange and yet familiar--of the old stone walls,

the banners, the flaring lamps and worn slippery stairs--all so much

barer, smaller, more dilapidated than he had remembered--stirred the

deep springs of his piety for inanimate things, and he was seized with a

fancy to snatch up a light and explore the recesses of the castle. But

he had been in the saddle since dawn, and the keen air and the long

hours of riding were in his blood. They weighted his lids, relaxed his

limbs, and gently divesting him of his hopes and fears, pressed him down

in the deep sepulchre of a dreamless sleep...

Odo remained a month at Donnaz. His grandfather's happiness in his

presence would in itself have sufficed to detain him, apart from his

natural tenderness for old scenes and associations. It was one of the

compensations of his rapidly travelling imagination that the past, from

each new vantage-ground of sensation, acquired a fascination which to

the more sober-footed fancy only the perspective of years can give.

Life, in childhood, is a picture-book of which the text is

undecipherable; and the youth now revisiting the unchanged setting of

his boyhood was spelling out for the first time the legend beneath the

picture.

The old Marquess, though broken in body, still ruled his household from

his seat beside the hearth. The failure of bodily activity seemed to

have doubled his moral vigour, and the walls shook with the vehemence of

his commands. The Marchioness was sunk in a state of placid apathy from

which only her husband's outbursts roused her; one of the canonesses was

dead, and the other, drier and more shrivelled than ever, pined in her

corner like a statue whose mate is broken. Bruno was dead too; his old

dog's bones had long since enriched a corner of the vineyard; and some

of the younger lads that Odo had known about the place were grown to

sober-faced men with wives and children.

Don Gervaso was still chaplain of Donnaz; and Odo saw with surprise that

the grave ecclesiastic who had formerly seemed an old man to him was in

fact scarce past the middle age. In general aspect he was unchanged; but

his countenance had darkened, and what Odo had once taken for harshness

of manner he now perceived to be a natural melancholy. The young man had

not been long at Donnaz without discovering that in that little world of

crystallised traditions the chaplain was the only person conscious of

the new forces abroad. It had never occurred to the Marquess that

anything short of a cataclysm such as it would be blasphemy to predict

could change the divinely established order whereby the territorial lord

took tithes from his peasantry and pastured his game on their crops. The

hierarchy which rested on the bowed back of the toiling serf and

culminated in the figure of the heaven-sent King seemed to him as

immutable as the everlasting hills. The men of his generation had not

learned that it was built on a human foundation and that a sudden

movement of the underlying mass might shake the structure to its

pinnacle. The Marquess, who, like Donna Laura, already beheld Odo on the

throne of Pianura, was prodigal of counsels which showed a touching

inability to discern the new aspect under which old difficulties were

likely to present themselves. That a ruler should be brave, prudent,

personally abstemious, and nobly lavish in his official display; that he

should repress any attempts on the privileges of the Church, while at

the same time protecting his authority from the encroachments of the

Holy See; these axioms seemed to the old man to sum up the sovereign's

duty to the state. The relation, to his mind, remained a distinctly

personal and paternal one; and Odo's attempts to put before him the new

theory of government, as a service performed by the ruler in the

interest of the ruled, resulted only in stirring up the old sediment of

absolutism which generations of feudal power had deposited in the Donnaz

blood.

Only the chaplain perceived what new agencies were at work; but even he

looked on as a watcher from a distant tower, who sees opposing armies

far below him in the night, without being able to follow their movements

or guess which way the battle goes.

"The days," he said to Odo, "are evil. The Church's enemies, the

basilisks and dragons of unbelief and license, are stirring in their old

lairs, the dark places of the human spirit. It is time that a fresh

purification by blood should cleanse the earth of its sins. That hour

has already come in France, where the blood of heretics has lately

fertilised the soil of faith; it will come here, as surely as I now

stand before you; and till it comes the faithful can only weary heaven

with their entreaties, if haply thereby they may mitigate the evil. I

shall remain here," he continued, "while the Marquess needs me; but that

task discharged, I intend to retire to one of the contemplative orders,

and with my soul perpetually uplifted like the arms of Moses, wear out

my life in prayer for those whom the latter days shall overtake."

Odo had listened in silence; but after a moment he said: "My father,

among those who have called in to question the old order of things there

are many animated by no mere desire for change, no idle inclination to

pry into the divine mysteries, but who earnestly long to ease the burden

of mankind and let light into what you have called the dark places of

the spirit. How is it, they ask, that though Christ came to save the

poor and the humble, it is on them that life presses most heavily after

eighteen hundred years of His rule? All cannot be well in a world where

such contradictions exist, and what if some of the worst abuses of the

age have found lodgment in the very ramparts that faith has built

against them?"

Don Gervaso's face grew stern and his eyes rested sadly on Odo. "You

speak," said he, "of bringing light into dark places; but what light is

there on earth save that which is shed by the Cross, and where shall

they find guidance who close their eyes to that divine illumination?"

"But is there not," Odo rejoined, "a divine illumination within each of

us, the light of truth which we must follow at any cost--or have the

worst evils and abuses only to take refuge in the Church to find

sanctuary there, as malefactors find it?"

The chaplain shook his head. "It is as I feared," he said, "and Satan

has spread his subtlest snare for you; for if he tempts some in the

guise of sensual pleasure, or of dark fears and spiritual abandonment,

it is said that to those he most thirsts to destroy he appears in the

likeness of their Saviour. You tell me it is to right the wrongs of the

poor and the humble that your new friends, the philosophers, have

assailed the authority of Christ. I have only one answer to make:

Christ, as you said just now, died for the poor--how many of your

philosophers would do as much? Because men hunger and thirst, is that a

sign that He has forsaken them? And since when have earthly privileges

been the token of His favour? May He not rather have designed that, by

continual sufferings and privations, they shall lay up for themselves

treasures in Heaven such as your eyes and mine shall never see or our

ears hear? And how dare you assume that any temporal advantages could

atone for that of which your teachings must deprive them--the heavenly

consolations of the love of Christ?"

Odo listened with a sense of deepening discouragement. "But is it

necessary," he urged, "to confound Christ with His ministers, the law

with its exponents? May not men preserve their hope of heaven and yet

lead more endurable lives on earth?"

"Ah, my child, beware, for this is the heresy of private judgment, which

has already drawn down thousands into the pit. It is one of the most

insidious errors in which the spirit of evil has ever masqueraded; for

it is based on the fallacy that we, blind creatures of a day, and

ourselves in the meshes of sin, can penetrate the counsels of the

Eternal, and test the balances of the heavenly Justice. I tremble to

think into what an abyss your noblest impulses may fling you, if you

abandon yourself to such illusions; and more especially if it pleases

God to place in your hands a small measure of that authority of which He

is the supreme repository.--When I took leave of you here nine years

since," Don Gervaso continued in a gentler tone, "we prayed together in

the chapel; and I ask you, before setting out on your new life, to

return there with me and lay your doubts and difficulties before Him who

alone is able to still the stormy waves of the soul."

Odo, touched by the appeal, accompanied him to the chapel, and knelt on

the steps whence his young spirit had once soared upward on the heavenly

pleadings of the Mass. The chapel was as carefully tended as ever; and

amid the comely appointments of the altar shone forth that Presence

which speaks to men of an act of love perpetually renewed. But to Odo

the voice was mute, the divinity wrapped in darkness; and he remembered

reading in some Latin author that the ancient oracles had ceased to

speak when their questioners lost faith in them. He knew not whether his

own faith was lost; he felt only that it had put forth on a sea of

difficulties across which he saw the light of no divine command.

In this mood there was no more help to be obtained from Don Gervaso than

from the Marquess. Odo's last days at Donnaz were clouded by a sense of

the deep estrangement between himself and that life of which the outward

aspect was so curiously unchanged. His past seemed to look at him with

unrecognising eyes, to bar the door against his knock; and he rode away

saddened by that sense of isolation which follows the first encounter

with a forgotten self.

At Ivrea the sight of Cantapresto and the travelling-carriage roused him

as from a waking dream. Here, at his beck were the genial realities of

life, embodied, humorously enough, in the bustling figure which for so

many years had played a kind of comic accompaniment to his experiences.

Cantapresto was in a fever of expectation. To set forth on the road

again, after nine years of well-fed monotony, and under conditions so

favourable to his physical well-being, was to drink the wine of romance

from a golden cup. Odo was at the age when the spirit lies as naturally

open to the variations of mood as a lake to the shifting of the breeze;

and Cantapresto's exuberant humour, and the novel details of their

travelling equipment, had soon effaced the graver influences of Donnaz.

Life stretched before him alluring and various as the open road; and his

pulses danced to the tune of the postillion's whip as the carriage

rattled out of the gates.

It was a bright morning and the plain lay beneath them like a planted

garden, in all the flourish and verdure of June; but the roads being

deep in mire, and unrepaired after the ravages of the winter, it was

past noon before they reached the foot of the hills. Here matters were

little better, for the highway was ploughed deep by the wheels of the

numberless vans and coaches journeying from one town to another during

the Whitsun holidays, so that even a young gentleman travelling post

must resign himself to a plebeian rate of progression. Odo at first was

too much pleased with the novelty of the scene to quarrel with any

incidental annoyances; but as the afternoon wore on the way began to

seem long, and he was just giving utterance to his impatience when

Cantapresto, putting his head out of the window, announced in a tone of

pious satisfaction that just ahead of them were a party of travellers in

far worse case than themselves. Odo, leaning out, saw that, a dozen

yards ahead, a modest chaise of antique pattern had in fact come to

grief by the roadside. He called to his postillion to hurry forward, and

they were soon abreast of the wreck, about which several people were

grouped in anxious colloquy. Odo sprang out to offer his services; but

as he alit he felt Cantapresto's hand on his sleeve.

"Cavaliere," the soprano whispered, "these are plainly people of no

condition, and we have yet a good seven miles to Vercelli, where all the

inns will be crowded for the Whitsun fair. Believe me, it were better to

go forward."

Odo advanced without heeding this admonition; but a moment later he had

almost regretted his action; for in the centre of the group about the

chaise stood the two persons whom, of all the world, he was at that

moment least wishful of meeting.

2.7.

It was in fact Vivaldi who, putting aside the knot of idlers about the

chaise, stepped forward at Odo's approach. The philosopher's countenance

was perturbed, his travelling-coat spattered with mud, and his daughter,

hooded and veiled, clung to him with an air of apprehension that smote

Odo to the heart. He caught a blush of recognition beneath her veil; and

as he drew near she raised a finger to her lip and faintly shook her

head.

The mute signal reassured him. "I see, sir," said he, turning

courteously to Vivaldi, "that you are in a bad plight, and I hope that I

or my carriage may be of service to you." He ventured a second glance at

Fulvia, but she had turned aside and was inspecting the wheel of the

chaise with an air of the most disheartening detachment.

Vivaldi, who had returned Odo's greeting without any sign of ill-will,

bowed slightly and seemed to hesitate a moment. "Our plight, as you

see," he said, "is indeed a grave one; for the wheel has come off our

carriage and my driver here tells me there is no smithy this side

Vercelli, where it is imperative we should lie tonight. I hope,

however," he added, glancing down the road, "that with all the traffic

now coming and going we may soon be overtaken by some vehicle that will

carry us to our destination."

He spoke calmly, but it was plain some pressing fear underlay his

composure, and the nature of the emergency was but too clear to Odo.

"Will not my carriage serve you?" he hastily rejoined. "I am for

Vercelli, and if you will honour me with your company we can go forward

at once."

Fulvia, during this exchange of words, had affected to be engaged with

the luggage, which lay in a heap beside the chaise; but at this point

she lifted her head and shot a glance at her father from under her black

travelling-hood.

Vivaldi's constraint increased. "This, sir," said he, "is a handsome

offer, and one for which I thank you; but I fear our presence may

incommode you and the additional weight of our luggage perhaps delay

your progress. I have little fear but some van or waggon will overtake

us before nightfall; and should it chance otherwise," he added with a

touch of irresistible pedantry, "why, it behoves us to remember that we

shall be none the worse off, since the sage is independent of

circumstances."

Odo could hardly repress a smile. "Such philosophy, sir, is admirable in

principle, but in practice hardly applicable to a lady unused to passing

her nights in a rice-field. The region about here is notoriously

unhealthy and you will surely not expose your daughter to the risk of

remaining by the roadside or of finding a lodging in some peasant's

hut."

Vivaldi drew himself up. "My daughter," said he, "has been trained to

face graver emergencies with an equanimity I have no fear of putting to

the touch--'the calm of a mind blest in the consciousness of its

virtue'; and were it not that circumstances are somewhat pressing--" he

broke off and glanced at Cantapresto, who was fidgeting about Odo's

carriage or talking in undertones with the driver of the chaise.