"Come, sir," said Odo urgently, "Let my servants put your luggage up and

we'll continue this argument on the road."

Vivaldi again paused. "Sir," he said at length, "will you first step

aside with me a moment?" he led Odo a few paces down the road. "I make

no pretence," he went on when they were out of Cantapresto's hearing,

"of concealing from you that this offer comes very opportune to our

needs, for it is urgent we should be out of Piedmont by tomorrow. But

before accepting a seat in your carriage, I must tell you that you offer

it to a proscribed man; since I have little reason to doubt that by this

time the sbirri are on my track."

It was impossible to guess from Vivaldi's manner whether he suspected

Odo of being the cause of his misadventure; and the young man, though

flushing to the forehead, took refuge in the thought of Fulvia's signal

and maintained a self-possessed silence.

"The motive of my persecution," Vivaldi continued, "I need hardly

explain to one acquainted with my house and with the aims and opinions

of those who frequent it. We live, alas, in an age when it is a moral

offence to seek enlightenment, a political crime to share it with

others. I have long foreseen that any attempt to raise the condition of

my countrymen must end in imprisonment or flight; and though perhaps to

have suffered the former had been a more impressive vindication of my

views, why, sir, the father at the last moment overruled the

philosopher, and thinking of my poor girl there, who but for me stands

alone in the world, I resolved to take refuge in a state where a man may

work for the liberty of others without endangering his own."

Odo had listened with rising eagerness. Was not here an opportunity, if

not to atone, at least to give practical evidence of his contrition?

"What you tell me sir," he exclaimed, "cannot but increase my zeal to

serve you. Here is no time to palter. I am on my way to Lombardy, which,

from what you say, I take to be your destination also; and if you and

your daughter will give me your company across the border I think you

need fear no farther annoyance from the police, since my passports, as

the Duke of Pianura's cousin, cover any friends I choose to take in my

company."

"Why, sir," said Vivaldi, visibly moved by the readiness of the

response, "here is a generosity so far in excess of our present needs

that it encourages me to accept the smaller favour of travelling with

you to Vercelli. There we have friends with whom we shall be safe for

the night, and soon after sunrise I hope we may be across the border."

Odo at once followed up his advantage by pointing out that it was on the

border that difficulties were most likely to arise; but after a few

moments of debate Vivaldi declared he must first take counsel with his

daughter, who still hung like a mute interrogation on the outskirts of

their talk.

After a few words with her, he returned to Odo. "My daughter," said he,

"whose good sense puts my wisdom to the blush, wishes me first to

enquire if you purpose returning to Turin; since in that case, as she

points out, your kindness might result in annoyances to which we have no

right to expose you."

Odo coloured. "Such considerations, I beg your daughter to believe,

would not weigh with me an instant; but as I am leaving Piedmont for two

years I am not so happy as to risk anything by serving you."

Vivaldi on this assurance at once consented to accept a seat in his

carriage as far as Boffalora, the first village beyond the Sardinian

frontier. It was agreed that at Vercelli Odo was to set down his

companions at an inn whence, alone and privately, they might gain their

friend's house; that on the morrow at daybreak he was to take them up at

a point near the convent of the Umiliati, and that thence they were to

push forward without a halt for Boffalora.

This agreement reached, Odo was about to offer Fulvia a hand to the

carriage when an unwelcome thought arrested him.

"I hope, sir," said he, again turning to Vivaldi, and blushing furiously

as he spoke, "that you feel assured of my discretion; but I ought

perhaps to warn you that my companion yonder, though the good-naturedest

fellow alive, is not one to live long on good terms with a secret,

whether his own or another's."

"I am obliged to you," said Vivaldi, "for the hint; but my daughter and

I are like those messengers who, in time of war, learn to carry their

despatches beneath their tongues. You may trust us not to betray

ourselves; and your friend may, if he chooses, suppose me to be

travelling to Milan to act as governor to a young gentleman of quality."

The Professor's luggage had by this been put on Odo's carriage, and the

latter advanced to Fulvia. He had drawn a favourable inference from the

concern she had shown for his welfare; but to his mortification she

merely laid two reluctant finger tips in his hand and took her seat

without a word of thanks or so much as a glance at her rescuer. This

unmerited repulse, and the constraint occasioned by Cantapresto's

presence, made the remainder of the drive interminable. Even the

Professor's apposite reflections on rice-growing and the culture of the

mulberry did little to shorten the way; and when at length the

bell-towers of Vercelli rose in sight Odo felt the relief of a man who

has acquitted himself of a tedious duty. He had looked forward with the

most romantic anticipations to the outcome of this chance encounter with

Fulvia; but the unforgiving humour which had lent her a transitory charm

now became as disfiguring as some physical defect; and his heart swelled

with the defiance of youthful disappointment.

It was near the angelus when they entered the city. Just within the

gates Odo set down his companions, who took leave of him, the one with

the heartiest expressions of gratitude, the other with a hurried

inclination of her veiled head. Thence he drove on to the Three Crowns,

where he designed to lie. The streets were still crowded with

holiday-makers and decked out with festal hangings. Tapestries and

silken draperies adorned the balconies of the houses, innumerable tiny

lamps framed the doors and windows, and the street-shrines were dressed

with a profusion of flowers; while every square and open space in the

city was crowded with booths, with the tents of ambulant comedians and

dentists, and with the outspread carpets of snake-charmers,

posture-makers and jugglers. Among this mob of quacks and pedlars

circulated other fantastic figures, the camp-followers of the army of

hucksters: dwarfs and cripples, mendicant friars, gypsy fortune-tellers,

and the itinerant reciters of Ariosto and Tasso. With these mingled the

towns-people in holiday dress, the well-to-do farmers and their wives,

and a throng of nondescript idlers, ranging from the servants of the

nobility pushing their way insolently through the crowd, to those

sinister vagabonds who lurk, as it were, in the interstices of every

concourse of people.

It was not long before the noise and animation about him had dispelled

Odo's ill-humour. The world was too fair to be darkened by a girl's

disdain, and a reaction of feeling putting him in tune with the humours

of the market-place, he at once set forth on foot to view the city. It

was now near sunset and the day's decline irradiated the stately front

of the Cathedral, the walls of the ancient Hospital that faced it, and

the groups gathered about the stalls and platforms obstructing the

square. Even in his travelling-dress Odo was not a figure to pass

unnoticed, and he was soon assailed by laughing compliments on his looks

and invitations to visit the various shows concealed behind the flapping

curtains of the tents. There were enough pretty faces in the crowd to

justify such familiarities, and even so modest a success was not without

solace to his vanity. He lingered for some time in the square, answering

the banter of the blooming market-women, inspecting the

filigree-ornaments from Genoa, and watching a little yellow bitch in a

hooped petticoat and lappets dance the furlana to the music of an

armless fiddler who held the bow in his teeth. As he turned from this

show Odo's eye was caught by a handsome girl who, on the arm of a

dashing cavalier in somewhat shabby velvet, was cheapening a pair of

gloves at a neighbouring stall. The girl, who was masked, shot a dark

glance at Odo from under her three-cornered Venetian hat; then, tossing

down a coin, she gathered up the gloves and drew her companion away. The

manoeuvre was almost a challenge, and Odo was about to take it up when a

pretty boy in a Scaramouch habit, waylaying him with various graceful

antics, thrust a play-bill in his hand; and on looking round he found

the girl and her gallant had disappeared. The play-bill, with a wealth

of theatrical rhetoric, invited Odo to attend the Performance to be

given that evening at the Philodramatic Academy by the celebrated Capo

Comico Tartaglia of Rimini and his world-renowned company of Comedians,

who, in the presence of the aristocracy of Vercelli, were to present a

new comedy entitled "Le Gelosie di Milord Zambo," with an Intermezzo of

singing and dancing by the best Performers of their kind.

Dusk was already falling, and Odo, who had brought no letters to the

gentry of Vercelli, where he intended to stay but a night, began to

wonder how he should employ his evening. He had hoped to spend it in

Vivaldi's company, but the Professor not having invited him, he saw no

prospect but to return to the inn and sup alone with Cantapresto. In the

doorway of the Three Crowns he found the soprano awaiting him.

Cantapresto, who had been as mute as a fish during the afternoon's

drive, now bustled forward with a great show of eagerness.

"What poet was it," he cried, "that paragoned youth to the Easter

sunshine, which, wherever it touches, causes a flower to spring up? Here

we are scarce alit in a strange city, and already a messenger finds the

way to our inn with a most particular word from his lady to the

Cavaliere Odo Valsecca." And he held out a perfumed billet sealed with a

flaming dart.

Odo's heart gave a leap at the thought that the letter might be from

Fulvia; but on breaking the seal he read these words, scrawled in an

unformed hand:--

"Will the Cavaliere Valsecca accept from an old friend, who desires to

renew her acquaintance with him, the trifling gift of a side-box at Don

Tartaglia's entertainment this evening?"

Vexed at his credulity, Odo tossed the invitation to Cantapresto; but a

moment later, recalling the glance of the pretty girl in the

market-place, he began to wonder if the billet might not be the prelude

to a sufficiently diverting adventure. It at least offered a way of

passing the evening; and after a hurried supper he set out with

Cantapresto for the Philodramatic Academy. It was late when they entered

their box, and several masks were already capering before the

footlights, exchanging lazzi with the townsfolk in the pit, and

addressing burlesque compliments to the quality in the boxes. The

theatre seemed small and shabby after those of Turin, and there was

little in the old-fashioned fopperies of a provincial audience to

interest a young gentleman fresh from the capital. Odo looked about for

any one resembling the masked beauty of the market-place; but he beheld

only ill-dressed dowagers and matrons, or ladies of the town more

conspicuous for their effrontery than for their charms.

The main diversion of the evening was by this begun. It was a comedy in

the style of Goldoni's early pieces, representing the actual life of the

day, but interspersed with the antics of the masks, to whose improvised

drolleries the people still clung. A terrific Don Spavento in cloak and

sword played the jealous English nobleman, Milord Zambo, and the part of

Tartaglia was taken by the manager, one of the best-known interpreters

of the character in Italy. Tartaglia was the guardian of the prima

amorosa, whom the enamoured Briton pursued; and in the Columbine, when

she sprang upon the stage with a pirouette that showed her slender

ankles and embroidered clocks, Odo instantly recognised the graceful

figure and killing glance of his masked beauty. Her face, which was now

uncovered, more than fulfilled the promise of her eyes, being indeed as

arch and engaging a countenance as ever flashed distraction across the

foot-lights. She was greeted with an outburst of delight that cost her a

sour glance from the prima amorosa, and presently the theatre was

ringing with her improvised sallies, uttered in the gay staccato of the

Venetian dialect. There was to Odo something perplexingly familiar in

this accent and in the light darting movements of her little head framed

in a Columbine's ruff, with a red rose thrust behind one ear; but after

a rapid glance about the house she appeared to take no notice of him and

he began to think it must be to some one else he owed his invitation.

From this question he was soon diverted by his increasing enjoyment of

the play. It was not indeed a remarkable example of its kind, being

crudely enough put together, and turning on a series of ridiculous and

disconnected incidents; but to a taste formed on the frigid elegancies

of Metastasio and the French stage there was something refreshing in

this plunge into the coarse homely atmosphere of the old popular

theatre. Extemporaneous comedies were no longer played in the great

cities, and Odo listened with surprise to the swift thrust and parry,

the inexhaustible flow of jest and repartee, the readiness with which

the comedians caught up each other's leads, like dancers whirling

without a false step through the mazes of some rapid contradance.

So engaged was he that he no longer observed the Columbine save as a

figure in this flying reel; but presently a burst of laughter fixed his

attention and he saw that she was darting across the stage pursued by

Milord Zambo, who, furious at the coquetries of his betrothed, was

avenging himself by his attentions to the Columbine. Half way across,

her foot caught and she fell on one knee. Zambo rushed to the rescue;

but springing up instantly, and feigning to treat his advance as a part

of the play, she cried out with a delicious assumption of outraged

dignity:--

"Not a step farther, villain! Know that it is sacrilege for a common

mortal to embrace one who has been kissed by his most illustrious

Highness the Heir-presumptive of Pianura!"

"Mirandolina of Chioggia!" sprang to Odo's lips. At the same instant the

Columbine turned about and swept him a deep curtsey, to the delight of

the audience, who had no notion of what was going forward, but were in

the humour to clap any whim of their favourite's; then she turned and

darted off the stage, and the curtain fell on a tumult of applause.

Odo had hardly recovered from his confusion when the door of the box

opened and the young Scaramouch he had seen in the market-place peeped

in and beckoned to Cantapresto. The soprano rose with alacrity, leaving

Odo alone in the dimly-lit box, his mind agrope in a labyrinth of

memories. A moment later Cantapresto returned with that air of furtive

relish that always proclaimed him the bearer of a tender message. The

one he now brought was to the effect that the Signorina Miranda

Malmocco, justly renowned as one of the first Columbines of Italy, had

charged him to lay at the Cavaliere Valsecca's feet her excuses for the

liberty she had taken with his illustrious name, and to entreat that he

would show his magnanimity by supping with her after the play in her

room at the Three Crowns--a request she was emboldened to make by the

fact that she was lately from Pianura, and could give him the last news

of the court.

The message chimed with Odo's mood, and the play over he hastened back

to the inn with Cantapresto, and bid the landlord send to the Signorina

Miranda's room whatever delicacies the town could provide. Odo on

arriving that afternoon had himself given orders that his carriage

should be at the door the next morning an hour before sunrise; and he

now repeated these instructions to Cantapresto, charging him on his life

to see that nothing interfered with their fulfilment. The soprano

objected that the hour was already late, and that they could easily

perform the day's journey without curtailing their rest; but on Odo's

reiteration of the order he resigned himself, with the remark that it

was a pity old age had no savings-bank for the sleep that youth

squandered.

2.8.

It was something of a disappointment to Odo, on entering the Signorina

Miranda's room, to find that she was not alone. Engaged in feeding her

pet monkey with sugar-plums was the young man who had given her his arm

in the Piazza. This gentleman, whom she introduced to Odo as her cousin

and travelling companion, the Count of Castelrovinato, had the same air

of tarnished elegance as his richly-laced coat and discoloured ruffles.

He seemed, however, of a lively and obliging humour, and Mirandolina

observed with a smile that she could give no better notion of his

amiability than by mentioning that he was known among her friends as the

Cavaliere Frattanto. This praise, Odo thought, seemed scarcely to the

cousin's liking; but he carried it off with the philosophic remark that

it is the mortar between the bricks that holds the building together.

"At present," said Mirandolina laughing, "he is engaged in propping up a

ruin; for he has fallen desperately in love with our prima amorosa, a

lady who lost her virtue under the Pharaohs, but whom, for his sake, I

have been obliged to include in our little supper."

This, it was clear, was merely a way of palliating the Count's

infatuation for herself; but he took the second thrust as good-naturedly

as the first, remarking that he had been bred for an archeologist and

had never lost his taste for the antique.

Odo's servants now appearing with a pasty of beccafichi, some bottles of

old Malaga and a tray of ices and fruits, the three seated themselves at

the table, which Mirandolina had decorated with a number of wax candles

stuck in the cut-glass bottles of the Count's dressing-case. Here they

were speedily joined by the actress's monkey and parrot, who had soon

spread devastation among the dishes. While Miranda was restoring order

by boxing the monkey's ears and feeding the shrieking bird from her

lips, the door opened to admit the prima amorosa, a lady whose mature

charms and mellifluous manner suggested a fine fruit preserved in syrup.

The newcomer was clearly engrossed in captivating the Count, and the

latter amply justified his nick-name by the cynical complaisance with

which he cleared the way for Odo by responding to her advances.

The tete-a-tete thus established, Miranda at once began to excuse

herself for the means she had taken to attract Odo's attention at the

theatre. She had heard from the innkeeper that the Duke of Pianura's

cousin, the Cavaliere Valsecca, was expected that day in Vercelli; and

seeing in the Piazza a young gentleman in travelling-dress and French

toupet, had at once guessed him to be the distinguished stranger from

Turin. At the theatre she had been much amused by the air of

apprehension with which Odo had appeared to seek, among the dowdy or

vulgar inmates of the boxes, the sender of the mysterious billet; and

the contrast between the elegant gentleman in embroidered coat and

gold-hilted sword, and the sleepy bewildered little boy of the midnight

feast at Chivasso, had seized her with such comic effect that she could

not resist a playful allusion to their former meeting. All this was set

forth with so sprightly an air of mock-contrition that, had Odo felt the

least resentment, it must instantly have vanished. He was, however, in

the humour to be pleased by whatever took his mind off his own affairs,

and none could be more skilled than Mirandolina in profiting by such a

mood.

He pressed her to tell him something of what had befallen her since they

had met, but she replied by questioning him about his own experiences,

and on learning that he had been called to Pianura on account of the

heir's ill-health she declared it was notorious that the little prince

had not long to live, and that the Duke could not hope for another son.

"The Duke's life, however," said Odo, "is as good as mine, and in truth

I am far less moved by my remote hopes of the succession than by the

near prospect of visiting so many famous cities and seeing so much that

is novel and entertaining."

Miranda shrugged her pretty shoulders. "Why, as to the Duke's life,"

said she, "there are some that would not give a counterfeit penny for

it; but indeed his Highness lives so secluded from the world, and is

surrounded by persons so jealous to conceal his true condition even from

the court, that the reports of his health are no more to be trusted than

the other strange rumours about him. I was told in Pianura that but four

persons are admitted to his familiarity: his confessor, his mistress,

Count Trescorre, who is already comptroller of finance and will soon be

prime-minister, and a strange German doctor or astrologer that is lately

come to the court. As to the Duchess, she never sees him; and were it

not for Trescorre, who has had the wit to stand well with both sides, I

doubt if she would know more of what goes on about her husband than any

scullion in the ducal kitchens."

She spoke with the air of one well-acquainted with the subject, and Odo,

curious to learn more, asked her how she came to have such an insight

into the intrigues of the court.

"Why," said she, "in the oddest way imaginable--by being the guest of

his lordship the Bishop of Pianura; and since you asked me just now to

tell you something of my adventures, I will, if you please, begin by

relating the occurrences that procured me this extraordinary honour. But

first," she added with a smile, "would it not be well to open another

bottle of Malaga?"

MIRANDOLINA'S STORY.

You must know, she continued, when Odo had complied with her request,

that soon after our parting at Chivasso the company with which I was

travelling came to grief through the dishonesty of the Harlequin, who

ran away with the Capo Comico's wife, carrying with him, besides the

lady, the far more irretrievable treasure of our modest earnings. This

brought us to destitution, and the troop was disbanded. I had nothing

but the spangled frock on my back, and thinking to make some use of my

sole possession I set out as a dancer with the flute-player of the

company, a good-natured fellow that had a performing marmozet from the

Indies. We three wandered from one town to another, spreading our carpet

wherever there was a fair or a cattle-market, going hungry in bad

seasons, and in our luckier days attaching ourselves to some band of

strolling posture-makers or comedians.

One day, after about a year of this life, I had the good fortune, in the

market-place of Parma, to attract the notice of a rich English nobleman

who was engaged in writing a book on the dances of the ancients. This

gentleman, though no longer young, and afflicted with that strange

English malady that obliges a man to wrap his feet in swaddling-clothes

like a new-born infant, was of a generous and paternal disposition, and

offered, if I would accompany him to Florence, to give me a home and a

genteel education. I remained with him about two years, during which

time he had me carefully instructed in music, French and the art of the

needle. In return for this, my principal duties were to perform in

antique dances before the friends of my benefactor--whose name I could

never learn to pronounce--and to read aloud to him the works of the

modern historians and philosophers.

We lived in a large palace with exceedingly high-ceilinged rooms, which

my friend would never have warmed on account of his plethoric habit, and

as I had to dance at all seasons in the light draperies worn by the

classical goddesses, I suffered terribly from chilblains and contracted

a cruel cough. To this, however, I might have resigned myself; but when

I learned from a young abate who frequented the house that the books I

was compelled to read were condemned by the Church, and could not be

perused without deadly peril to the soul, I at once resolved to fly from

such contaminating influences. Knowing that his lordship would not

consent to my leaving him, I took the matter out of his hands by

slipping out one day during the carnival, carrying with me from that

accursed house nothing but the few jewels that my benefactor had

expressed the intention of leaving me in his will. At the nearest church

I confessed my involuntary sin in reading the prohibited books, and

having received absolution and the sacrament, I joined my friend the

abate at Cafaggiolo, whence we travelled to Modena, where he was

acquainted with a theatrical manager just then in search of a Columbine.

My dancing and posturing at Florence had given me something of a name

among the dilettanti, and I was at once engaged by the manager, who took

me to Venice, where I subsequently joined the company of the excellent

Tartaglia with whom I am now acting. Since then I have been attended by

continued success, which I cannot but ascribe to my virtuous resolve to

face poverty and distress rather than profit a moment longer by the

beneficence of an atheist.

All this I have related to show you how the poor ignorant girl you met

at Chivasso was able to acquire something of the arts and usages of good

company; but I will now pass on to the incident of my visit to Pianura.

Our manager, then, had engaged some time since to give a series of

performances at Pianura during the last carnival. The Bishop's nephew,

Don Serafino, who has a pronounced taste for the theatre, had been

instrumental in making the arrangement; but at the last moment he wrote

us that, owing to the influence of the Duke's confessor, the Bishop had

been obliged to prohibit the appearance of women on the stage of

Pianura. This was a cruel blow, as we had prepared a number of comedies

in which I was to act the leading part; and Don Serafino was equally

vexed, since he did me the honour of regarding me as the chief ornament

of the company. At length it was agreed that, to overcome the

difficulty, it should be given out that the celebrated Tartaglia of

Rimini would present himself at Pianura with his company of comedians,

among whom was the popular favourite, Mirandolino of Chioggia, twin

brother of the Signorina Miranda Malmocco, and trained by that actress

to play in all her principal parts.

This satisfied the scruples and interests of all concerned, and soon

afterward I made my first appearance in Pianura. My success was greater

than we had foreseen; for I threw myself into the part with such zest

that every one was taken in, and even Don Serafino required the most

categorical demonstration to convince him that I was not my own brother.

The illusion I produced was, however, not without its inconveniences;

for, among the ladies who thronged to see the young Mirandolino, were

several who desired a closer acquaintance with him; and one of these, as

it happened, was the Duke's mistress, the Countess Belverde. You will

see the embarrassment of my situation. If I failed to respond to her

advances, her influence was sufficient to drive us from the town at the

opening of a prosperous season; if I discovered my sex to her, she might

more cruelly avenge herself by throwing the whole company into prison,

to be dealt with by the Holy Office. Under these circumstances, I

decided to appeal to the Bishop, but without, of course, revealing to

him that I was, so to speak, my own sister. His lordship, who is never

sorry to do the Belverde a bad turn, received me with the utmost

indulgence, and declared that, to protect my innocence from the designs

of this new Potiphar's wife, he would not only give me a lodging in the

Episcopal palace, but confer on me the additional protection of the

minor orders. This was rather more than I had bargained for, but he that

wants the melon is a fool to refuse the rind, and I thanked the Bishop

for his kindness and allowed him to give out that, my heart having been

touched by grace, I had resolved, at the end of the season, to withdraw

from the stage and prepare to enter the Church.

I now fancied myself safe; for I knew the Countess could not attempt my

removal without risk of having her passion denounced to the Duke. I

spent several days very agreeably in the Episcopal palace, entertained

at his lordship's own table, and favoured with private conversations

during which he told me many curious and interesting things about the

Duke and the court, and delicately abstained from all allusion to my

coming change of vocation. The Countess, however, had not been idle. One

day I received notice that the Holy Office disapproved of the appearance

on the stage of a young man about to enter the Church, and requested me

to withdraw at once to the Barnabite monastery, where I was to remain

till I received the minor orders. Now the Abbot of the Barnabites was

the Belverde's brother, and I saw at once that to obey his order would

place me in that lady's power. I again addressed myself to the Bishop,

but to my despair he declared himself unable to aid me farther, saying

that he dared not offend the Holy Office, and that he had already run

considerable risk in protecting me from the Countess.

I was accordingly transferred to the monastery, in spite of my own

entreaties and those of the good Tartaglia, who moved heaven and earth

to save his Columbine from sequestration. You may imagine my despair. My

fear of doing Tartaglia an injury kept me from revealing my sex, and for

twenty-four hours I languished in my cell, refusing food and air, and

resisting the repeated attempts of the good monks to alleviate my

distress. At length however I bethought me that the Countess would soon

appear; and it flashed across me that the one person who could protect

me from her was her brother. I at once sought an interview with the

Abbot, who received me with great indulgence. I explained to him that

the distress I suffered was occasioned by the loss that my sequestration

was causing my excellent manager, and begged him to use his influence to

have me released from the monastery. The Abbot listened attentively, and

after a pause replied that there was but one person who could arrange

the matter, and that was his sister the Countess Belverde, whose

well-known piety gave her considerable influence in such matters. I now

saw that no alternative remained but to confess the truth; and with

tears of agitation I avowed my sex, and threw myself on his mercy.

I was not disappointed in the result. The Abbot listened with the

greatest benevolence to all the details of my adventure. He laughed

heartily at his sister's delusion, but said I had done right in not

undeceiving her, as her dread of ridicule might have led to unpleasant

reprisals. He declared that for the present he could not on any account

consent to let me out of his protection; but he promised if I submitted

myself implicitly to his guidance, not only to preserve me from the

Belverde's machinations, but to ensure my reappearing on the stage

within two days at the latest. Knowing him to be a very powerful

personage I thought it best to accept these conditions, which in any

case it would have been difficult to resist; and the next day he

informed me that the Holy Office had consented to the Signorina Miranda

Malmocco's appearing on the stage of Pianura during the remainder of the

season, in consideration of the financial injury caused to the manager

of the company by the edifying conversion of her twin-brother.

"In this way," the Abbot was pleased to explain, "you will be quite safe

from my sister, who is a woman of the most unexceptionable morals, and

at the same time you will not expose our excellent Bishop to the charge

of having been a party to a grave infraction of ecclesiastical

discipline.--My only condition," he added with a truly paternal smile,

"is that, after the Signorina Miranda's performance at the theatre her

twin-brother the Signor Mirandolino shall return every evening to the

monastery: a condition which seems necessary to the preservation of our

secret, and which I trust you will not regard as too onerous, in view of

the service I have been happy enough to render you."

It would have ill become me to dispute the excellent ecclesiastic's

wishes, and Tartaglia and the rest of the company having been sworn to

secrecy, I reappeared that very evening in one of my favourite parts,

and was afterward carried back to the monastery in the most private

manner. The Signorina Malmocco's successes soon repaired the loss

occasioned by her brother's withdrawal, and if any suspected their

identity all were interested to conceal their suspicions.

Thus it came about that my visit to Pianura, having begun under the roof

of a Bishop, ended in a monastery of Barnabites--nor have I any cause to

complain of the hospitality of either of my hosts...

* * * * *

Odo, charmed by the vivacity with which this artless narrative was

related, pressed Miranda to continue the history of her adventures. The

actress laughingly protested that she must first refresh herself with

one of the ices he had so handsomely provided; and meanwhile she begged

the Count to favour them with a song.

This gentleman, who seemed glad of any pretext for detaching himself

from his elderly flame, rescued Mirandolina's lute from the inquisitive

fingering of the monkey, and striking a few melancholy chords, sang the

following words, which he said he had learned from a peasant of the

Abruzzi:--

Flower of the thyme!

She draws me as your fragrance draws the bees,

She draws me as the cold moon draws the seas,

And summer winter-time.

Flower of the broom!

Like you she blossoms over dark abysses,

And close to ruin bloom her sweetest kisses,

And on the brink of doom.

Flower of the rue!

She wore you on her breast when first we met.

I begged your blossom and I wear it yet--

Flower of regret!

The song ended, the prima amorosa, overcome by what she visibly deemed

an appeal to her feelings, declared with some agitation that the hour

was late and she must withdraw. Miranda wished the actress an

affectionate goodnight and asked the Count to light her to her room,

which was on the farther side of the gallery surrounding the courtyard

of the inn. Castelrovinato complied with his usual air of resignation,

and the door closing on the couple, Odo and Miranda found themselves

alone.

"And now," said the good-natured girl, placing herself on the sofa and

turning to her guest with a smile, "if you will take a seat at my side I

will gladly continue the history of my adventures"...

2.9.

Odo woke with a start. He had been trying to break down a great

gold-barred gate, behind which Fulvia, pale and disordered, struggled in

the clutch of the blind beggar of the Corpus Domini...

He sat up and looked about him. The gate was still there; but as he

gazed it resolved itself into his shuttered window, barred with wide

lines of sunlight. It was day, then! He sprang out of bed and flung open

the shutters. Beneath him lay the piazza of Vercelli, bathed in the

vertical brightness of a summer noon; and as he stared out on this

inexorable scene, the clock over the Hospital struck twelve.

Twelve o'clock! And he had promised to meet Vivaldi at dawn behind the

Umiliati! As the truth forced itself on Odo he dropped into a chair and

hid his face with a groan. He had failed them again, then--and this time

how cruelly and basely! He felt himself the victim of a conspiracy which

in some occult manner was forever forcing him to outrage and betray the

two beings he most longed to serve. The idea of a conspiracy flashed a

sudden light on his evening's diversion, and he sprang up with a cry.

Yes! It was a plot, and any but a dolt must have traced the soprano's

hand in this vulgar assault upon his senses. He choked with anger at the

thought of having played the dupe when two lives he cherished were

staked upon his vigilance...

To his furious summons Cantapresto presented a blank wall of ignorance.

Yes, the Cavaliere had given orders that the carriage should be ready

before daybreak; but who was authorised to wake the cavaliere? After

keeping the carriage two hours at the door Cantapresto had ventured to

send it back to the stable; but the horses should instantly be put to,

and within an hour they would be well forward on their journey.

Meanwhile, should the barber be summoned at once? Or would the cavaliere

first refresh himself with an excellent cup of chocolate, prepared under

Cantapresto's own supervision?

Odo turned on him savagely. "Traitor--spy! In whose pay--?"

But the words roused him to a fresh sense of peril. Cantapresto, though

he might have guessed Odo's intention, was not privy to his plan of

rejoining Vivaldi and Fulvia; and it flashed across the young man that

his self-betrayal must confirm the others' suspicions. His one hope of

protecting his friends was to affect indifference to what had happened;

and this was made easier, by the reflection that Cantapresto was after

all but a tool in more powerful hands. To be spied on was so natural to

an Italian of that day that the victim's instinct was rather to

circumvent the spy than to denounce him.

Odo dismissed Cantapresto with the reply that he would give orders about

the carriage later; desiring that meanwhile the soprano should purchase

the handsomest set of filigree ornaments to be found in Vercelli, and

carry them with the Cavaliere Valsecca's compliments to the Signorina

Malmocco.

Having thus rid himself of observation he dressed as rapidly as

possible, trying the while to devise some means of tracing Vivaldi. But

the longer he pondered the attempt the more plainly he saw its futility.

Vivaldi, doubtless from motives of prudence, had not named the friend

with whom he and Fulvia were to take shelter; nor did Odo even know in

what quarter of the city to seek them. To question the police was to

risk their last chance of safety; and for the same reason he dared not

enquire of the posting-master whether any travellers had set out that

morning for Lombardy. His natural activity of mind was hampered by a

leaden sense of remissness. With what anguish of spirit must Vivaldi and

Fulvia have awaited him in that hour of dawn behind the convent! What

thoughts must have visited the girl's mind as day broadened, the city

woke, and peril pressed on them with every voice and eye! And when at

length they saw that he had failed them, which way did their hunted

footsteps turn? Perhaps they dared not go back to the friend who had

taken them in for the night. Perhaps even now they wandered through the

streets, fearing arrest if they revealed themselves by venturing to

engage a carriage, at every turn of his thoughts Odo was mocked by some

vision of disaster; and an hour of perplexity yielded no happier

expedient than that of repairing to the meeting-place behind the

Umiliati. It was a deserted lane with few passers; and after vainly

questioning the blank wall of the convent and the gates of a

sinister-looking alms-house that faced it, he retraced his steps to the

inn.

He spent a day of futile research and bitter thoughts, now straying

forth in the hope of meeting Vivaldi, now hastening back to the Three

Crowns on the chance that some message might await him. He dared not let

his mind rest on what might have befallen his friends; yet the

alternative of contemplating his own course was scarcely more endurable.

Nightfall brought the conviction that the Professor and Fulvia had

passed beyond his reach. It was clear that if they were still in

Vercelli they did not mean to make their presence known to him, while in

the event of their escape he was without means of tracing them farther.

He knew indeed that their destination was Milan, but, should they reach

there safely, what hope was there of finding them in a city of

strangers? By a stroke of folly he had cut himself off from all

communication with them, and his misery was enhanced by the discovery of

his weakness. He who had fed his fancy on high visions, cherishing in

himself the latent patriot and hero, had been driven by a girl's caprice

to break the first law of manliness and honour! The event had already

justified her; and in a flash of self-contempt he saw himself as she no

doubt beheld him--the fribble preying like a summer insect on the slow

growths of difficult years...

In bitterness of spirit he set out the next morning for Pianura. A

half-melancholy interest drew him back to the scene of his lonely

childhood, and he had started early in order to push on that night to

Pontesordo. At Valsecca, the regular posting-station between Vercelli

and Pianura, he sent Cantapresto forward to the capital, and in a stormy

yellow twilight drove alone across the waste land that dipped to the

marshes. On his right the woods of the ducal chase hung black against

the sky; and presently he saw ahead of him the old square keep, with a

flight of swallows circling low about its walls.

In the muddy farm-yard a young man was belabouring a donkey laden with

mulberry-shoots. He stared for a moment at Odo's approach and then

sullenly returned to his task.

Odo sprang out into the mud. "Why do you beat the brute?" said he

indignantly. The other turned a dull face on him and he recognised his

old enemy Giannozzo.

"Giannozzo," he cried, "don't you know me? I am the Cavaliere Valsecca,

whose ears you used to box when you were a lad. Must you always be

pummelling something, that you can't let that poor brute alone at the

end of its day's work?"

Giannozzo, dropping his staff, stammered out that he craved his

excellency's pardon for not knowing him, but that as for the ass it was

a stubborn devil that would not have carried Jesus Christ without

gibbing.

"The beast is tired and hungry," cried Odo, his old compassion for the

sufferings of the farm-animals suddenly reviving. "How many hours have

you worked it without rest or food?"

"No more than I have worked myself," said Giannozzo sulkily; "and as for

its being hungry, why should it fare better than its masters?"

Their words had called out of the house a lean bent woman, whose

shrivelled skin showed through the rents in her unbleached shift. At

sight of Odo she pushed Giannozzo aside and hurried forward to ask how

she might serve the gentleman.

"With supper and a bed, my good Filomena," said Odo; and she flung

herself at his feet with a cry.

"Saints of heaven, that I should not have known his excellency! But I am

half blind with the fever, and who could have dreamed of such an

honour?" She clung to his knees in the mud, kissing his hands and

calling down blessings on him. "And as for you, Giannozzo, you

curd-faced fool, quick, see that his excellency's horses are stabled and

go call your father from the cow-house while I prepare his excellency's

supper. And fetch me in a faggot to light the fire in the bailiff's

parlour."

Odo followed her into the kitchen, where he had so often crouched in a

corner to eat his polenta out of reach of her vigorous arm. The roof

seemed lower and more smoke-blackened than ever, but the hearth was

cold, and he noticed that no supper was laid. Filomena led him into the

bailiff's parlour, where a mortal chill seized him. Cobwebs hung from

the walls, the window-panes were broken and caked with grime, and the

few green twigs which Giannozzo presently threw on the hearth poured a

cloud of smoke into the cold heavy air.

There was a long delay while supper was preparing, and when at length

Filomena appeared, it was only to produce, with many excuses, a loaf of

vetch-bread, a bit of cheese and some dried quinces. There was nothing

else in the house, she declared: not so much as a bit of lard to make

soup with, a handful of pasti or a flask of wine. In the old days, as

his excellency might remember, they had eaten a bit of meat on Sundays,

and drunk aquarolle with their supper; but since the new taxes it was as

much as the farmers could do to feed their cattle, without having a

scrap to spare for themselves. Jacopone, she continued, was bent double

with the rheumatism, and had not been able to drive a plough or to work

in the mulberries for over two years. He and the farm-lads sat in the

cow-stables when their work was over, for the sake of the heat, and she

carried their black bread out there to them: a cold supper tasted better

in a warm place, and as his excellency knew, all the windows in the

house were unglazed save in the bailiff's parlour. Her man would be in

presently to pay his duty to his excellency; but he had grown

dull-witted since the rheumatism took him, and his excellency must not

take it ill if his talk was a little childish.

Thereupon Filomena excused herself, that she might put a clean shirt on

Jacopone, and Odo was left to his melancholy musings. His mind had of

late run much on economic abuses; but what was any philandering with

reform to this close contact with misery? It was as though white hungry

faces had suddenly stared in at the windows of his brightly-lit life.

What did these people care for education, enlightenment, the religion of

humanity? What they wanted was fodder for their cattle, a bit of meat on

Sundays and a faggot on the hearth.

Filomena presently returned with her husband; but Jacopone had shrunk

into a crippled tremulous old man, who pulled a vague forelock at Odo

without sign of recognition. Filomena, it was clear, was master at

Pontesordo; for though Giannozzo was a man grown, and did a man's work,

he still danced to the tune of his mother's tongue. It was from her that

Odo, shivering over the smoky hearth, gathered the details of their

wretched state. Pontesordo being a part of the ducal domain, they had

led in their old days an easier life than their neighbours; but the new

taxes had stripped them as bare as a mulberry-tree in June.

"How is a Christian to live, excellency, with the salt-tax doubled, so

that the cows go dry for want of it; with half a zecchin on every pair

of oxen, a stajo of wheat and two fowls to the parish, and not so much

as a bite of grass allowed on the Duke's lands? In his late Highness's

day the poor folk were allowed to graze their cattle on the borders of

the chase; but now a man dare not pluck a handful of weeds there, or so

much as pick up a fallen twig; though the deer may trample his young

wheat, and feed off the patch of beans at his very door. They do say the

Duchess has a kind heart, and gives away money to the towns-folk; but we

country-people who spend our lives raising fodder for her game never

hear of her Highness but when one of her game-keepers comes down on us

for poaching or stealing wood.--Yes, by the saints, and it was her

Highness who sent a neighbour's lad to the galleys last year for felling

a tree in the chase; a good lad as ever dug furrow, but he lacked wood

for a new plough-share, and how in God's name was he to plough his field

without it?"

So she went on, like a torrent after the spring rains; but when he named

Momola she fell silent, and Giannozzo, looking sideways, drummed with

his heel on the floor.

Odo glanced from one to the other. "She's dead, then?" he cried.

Filomena opened deprecating palms. "Can one tell, excellency? It may be

she is off with the gypsies."

"The gypsies? How long since?"

"Giannozzo," cried his mother, as he stood glowering, "go see that the

stable is locked and his excellency's horses bedded down." He slunk out

and she began to gather up the remains of Odo's meagre supper.

"But you must remember when this happened."

"Holy Mother! It was the year we had frost in April and lost our

hatching for want of leaves. But as for that child of ingratitude, one

day she was here, the next she was gone--clean gone, as a nut drops from

the tree--and I that had given the blood of my veins to nourish her!

Since then, God is my witness, we have had nothing but misfortune. The

next year it was the weevils in the wheat; and so it goes."

Odo was silent, seeing it was vain to press her. He fancied that the

girl must have died--of neglect perhaps, or ill usage--and that they

feared to own it. His heart swelled, but not against them: they seemed

to him no more accountable than cowed hunger-driven animals.

He tossed impatiently on the hard bed Filomena had made up for him in

the bailiff's parlour, and was afoot again with the first light.

Stepping out into the farm-yard he looked abroad over the flat grey face

of the land. Around the keep stretched the new-ploughed fields and the

pollarded mulberry orchards; but these, with the clustered hovels of the

village, formed a mere islet in the surrounding waste of marsh and

woodland. The scene symbolised fitly enough of social conditions of the

country: the over-crowded peasantry huddled on their scant patches of

arable ground, while miles of barren land represented the feudal rights

that hemmed them in on every side.

Odo walked across the yard to the chapel. On the threshold he stumbled

over a heap of mulberry-shoots and a broken plough-share. Twilight held

the place; but as he stood there the frescoes started out in the slant

of the sunrise like dead faces floating to the surface of a river. Dead

faces, yes: plaintive spectres of his childish fears and longings, lost

in the harsh daylight of experience. He had forgotten the very dreams

they stood for: Lethe flowed between and only one voice reached across

the torrent. It was that of Saint Francis, lover of the poor...

The morning was hot as Odo drove toward Pianura, and limping ahead of

him in the midday glare he presently saw the figure of a hump-backed man

in a decent black dress and three-cornered hat. There was something

familiar in the man's gait, and in the shape of his large head, poised

on narrow stooping shoulders, and as the carriage drew abreast of him,

Odo, leaning from the window, cried out, "Brutus--this must be Brutus!"

"Your excellency has the advantage of me," said the hunchback, turning

on him a thin face lit by the keen eyes that had once searched his

childish soul.

Odo met the rebuff with a smile. "Does that," said he, "prevent my

suggesting that you might continue your way more comfortably in my

carriage? The road is hot and dusty, and, as you see, I am in want of

company."

The pedestrian, who seemed unprepared for this affable rejoinder, had

the sheepish air of a man whose rudeness has missed the mark.

"Why, sir," said he, recovering himself, "comfort is all a matter of

habit, and I daresay the jolting of your carriage might seem to me more

unpleasant than the heat and dust of the road, to which necessity has

long since accustomed me."

"In that case," returned Odo with increasing amusement, "you will have

the additional merit of sacrificing your pleasure to add to mine."

The hunchback stared. "And what have you or yours ever done for me," he

retorted, "that I should sacrifice to your pleasure even the wretched

privilege of being dusted by the wheels of your coach?"

"Why, that," replied Odo, "is a question I can scarce answer till you

give me the opportunity of naming myself.--If you are indeed Carlo

Gamba," he continued, "I am your old friend and companion Odo Valsecca."

The hunchback started. "The Cavaliere Valsecca!" he cried. "I had heard

that you were expected." He stood gazing at Odo. "Our next Duke!" he

muttered.

Odo smiled. "I had rather," he said, "that my past commended me than my

future. It is more than doubtful if I am ever able to offer you a seat

in the Duke's carriage; but Odo Valsecca's is very much at your

service."

Gamba bowed with a kind of awkward dignity. "I am grateful for a

friend's kindness," he said, "but I do not ride in a nobleman's

carriage."

"There," returned Odo with perfect good-humour, "you have had advantage

of ME; for I can no more escape doing so than you can escape spending

your life in the company of an ill-tempered man." And courteously

lifting his hat he called to the postillion to drive on.

The hunchback at this, flushing red, laid a hand on the carriage door.

"Sir," said he, "I freely own myself in the wrong; but a smooth temper

was not one of the blessings my unknown parents bequeathed to me; and I

confess I had heard of you as one little concerned with your inferiors

except as they might chance to serve your pleasure."

It was Odo's turn to colour. "Look," said he, "at the fallibility of

rumour; for I had heard of you as something of a philosopher, and here I

find you not only taking a man's character on hearsay but denying him

the chance to prove you mistaken!"

"I deny it no longer," said Gamba stepping into the coach; "but as to

philosophy, the only claim I can make to it is that of being by birth a

peripatetic."

His dignity appeased, the hunchback proved himself a most engaging

companion, and as the carriage lumbered slowly toward Pianura he had

time not only to recount his own history but to satisfy Odo as to many

points of the life awaiting him.

Gamba, it appeared, owed his early schooling to a Jesuit priest who,

visiting the foundling asylum, had been struck by the child's quickness,

and had taken him home and bred him to be a clerk. The priest's death

left his charge adrift, with a smattering of scholarship above his

station, and none to whom he could turn for protection. For a while he

had lived, as he said, like a street-cat, picking up a meal where he

could, and sleeping in church porches and under street-arcades, till one

of the Duke's servants took pity on him and he was suffered to hang

about the palace and earn his keep by doing the lacquey's errands. The

Duke's attention having been called to him as a lad of parts, his

Highness had given him to the Marquess of Cerveno, in whose service he

remained till shortly before that young nobleman's death. The hunchback

passed hastily over this period; but his reticence was lit by the angry

flash of his eyes. After the Marquess's death he had lived for a while

from hand to mouth, copying music, writing poetry for weddings and

funerals, doing pen-and-ink portraits at a scudo apiece, and putting his

hand to any honest job that came his way. Count Trescorre, who now and

then showed a fitful recognition of the tie that was supposed to connect

them, at length heard of the case to which he was come and offered him a

trifling pension. This the hunchback refused, asking instead to be given

some fixed employment. Trescorre then obtained his appointment as

assistant to the Duke's librarian, a good old priest engrossed in

compiling the early history of Pianura from the ducal archives; and this

post Gamba had now filled for two years.

"It must," said Odo, "be one singularly congenial to you, if, as I have

heard, you are of a studious habit. Though I suppose," he tentatively

added, "the library is not likely to be rich in works of the new

scientific and philosophic schools."

His companion received this observation in silence; and after a moment

Odo continued: "I have a motive in asking, since I have been somewhat

deeply engaged in the study of these writers, and my dearest wish is to

continue while in Pianura my examination of their theories, and if

possible to become acquainted with any who share their views."

He was not insensible of the risk of thus opening himself to a stranger;

but the sense of peril made him the more eager to proclaim himself on

the side of the cause he seemed to have deserted.

Gamba turned as he spoke, and their eyes met in one of those revealing

glances that lay the foundations of friendship.

"I fear, Cavaliere," said the hunchback with a smile, "that you will

find both branches of investigation somewhat difficult to pursue in

Pianura; for the Church takes care that neither the philosophers nor

their books shall gain a footing in our most Christian state. Indeed,"

he added, "not only must the library be free from heretical works, but

the librarian clear of heretical leanings; and since you have honoured

me with your confidence I will own that, the court having got wind of my

supposed tendency to liberalism, I live in daily expectation of

dismissal. For the moment they are content to keep their spies on me;

but were it not for the protection of the good abate, my superior, I

should long since have been turned out."

"And why," asked Odo, "do you speak of the court and the Church as one?"

"Because, sir, in our virtuous duchy the terms are interchangeable. The

Duke is in fact so zealous a son of the Church that if the latter showed

any leniency to sinners the secular arm would promptly repair her

negligence. His Highness, as you may have heard, is ruled by his

confessor, an adroit Dominican. The confessor, it is true, has two

rivals, the Countess Belverde, a lady distinguished for her piety, and a

German astrologer or alchemist, lately come to Pianura, and calling

himself a descendant of the Egyptian priesthood and an adept of the

higher or secret doctrines of Neoplatonism. These three, however, though

ostensibly rivals for the Duke's favour, live on such good terms with

one another that they are suspected of having entered into a secret

partnership; while some regard them all as the emissaries of the

Jesuits, who, since the suppression of the Society, are known to have

kept a footing in Pianura, as in most of the Italian states. As to the

Duke, the death of the Marquess of Cerveno, the failing health of the

little prince, and his own strange physical infirmities, have so preyed

on his mind that he is the victim of any who are unscrupulous enough to

trade on the fears of a diseased imagination. His counsellors, however

divided in doctrine, have at least one end in common; and that is, to

keep the light of reason out of the darkened chamber in which they have

confined him; and with such a ruler and such principles of government,

you may fancy that poor philosophy has not where to lay her head."

"And the people?" Odo pursued. "What of the fiscal administration? In

some states where liberty of thought is forbidden the material welfare

of the subject is nevertheless considered."

The hunchback shook his head. "It may be so," said he, "though I had

thought the principle of moral tyranny must infect every branch of

public administration. With us, at all events, where the Church party

rules, the privileges and exemptions of the clergy are the chief source

of suffering, and the state of passive ignorance in which they have kept

the people has bred in the latter a dull resignation that is the surest

obstacle to reform. Oh, sir," he cried, his eyes darkening with emotion,

"if you could see, as I do, the blind brute misery on which all the

magnificence of rank and all the refinements of luxury are built, you

would feel, as you drive along this road, that with every turn of the

wheels you are passing over the bodies of those who have toiled without

ceasing that you might ride in a gilt coach, and have gone hungry that

you might feast in Kings' palaces!"

The touch of rhetoric in this adjuration did not discredit it with Odo,

to whom the words were as caustic on an open wound. He turned to make

some impulsive answer; but as he did so he caught sight of the towers of

Pianura rising above the orchards and market-gardens of the suburbs. The

sight started a new train of feeling, and Gamba, perceiving it, said

quietly: "But this is no time to speak of such things."

A moment later the carriage had passed under the great battlemented

gates, with their Etruscan bas-reliefs, and the motto of the house of

Valsecca--Humilitas--surmounted by the ducal escutcheon.

Though the hour was close on noon the streets were as animated as at the

angelus, and the carriage could hardly proceed for the crowd obstructing

its passage. So unusual at that period was such a sight in one of the

lesser Italian cities that Odo turned to Gamba for an explanation. At

the same moment a roar rose from the crowd; and the coach turning into

the Corso which led to the ducal palace and the centre of the town, Odo

caught sight of a strange procession advancing from that direction. It

was headed by a clerk or usher with a black cap and staff, behind whom

marched two bare-foot friars escorting between them a middle-aged man in

the dress of an abate, his hands bound behind him and his head

surmounted by a paste-board mitre inscribed with the title: A Destroyer

of Female Chastity. This man, who was of a simple and decent aspect, was

so dazed by the buffeting of the crowd, so spattered by the mud and

filth hurled at him from a hundred taunting hands, and his countenance

distorted by so piteous a look of animal fear, that he seemed more like

a madman being haled to Bedlam than a penitent making public amends for

his offence.

"Are such failings always so severely punished in Pianura?" Odo asked,

turning ironically to Gamba as the mob and its victim passed out of

sight.

The hunchback smiled. "Not," said he, "if the offender be in a position

to benefit by the admirable doctrines of probabilism, the direction of

intention, or any one of the numerous expedients by which an indulgent

Church has smoothed the way of the sinner; but as God does not give the

crop unless man sows the seed, so His ministers bestow grace only when

the penitent has enriched the treasury. The fellow," he added, "is a man

of some learning and of a retired and orderly way of living, and the

charge was brought against him by a jeweller and his wife, who owed him

a sum of money and are said to have chosen this way of evading payment.

The priests are always glad to find a scape-goat of the sort, especially

when there are murmurs against the private conduct of those in high

places, and the woman, having denounced him, was immediately assured by

her confessor that any debt incurred to a seducer was null and void, and

that she was entitled to a hundred scudi of damages for having been led

into sin."

2.10.

At the Duke's express wish, Odo was to lodge in the palace; and when he

entered the courtyard he found Cantapresto waiting to lead him to his

apartment.

The rooms assigned to him lay at the end of one of the wings overlooking

the gardens; and as he mounted the great stairway and walked down the

corridors with their frescoed walls and busts of Roman emperors he

recalled the far-off night when he had passed through the same scenes as

a frightened awe-struck child. Where he had then beheld a supernatural

fabric, peopled with divinities of bronze and marble, and glowing with

light and colour, he now saw a many-corridored palace, stately indeed,

and full of a faded splendour, but dull and antiquated in comparison

with the new-fangled elegance of the Sardinian court. Yet at every turn

some object thrilled the fibres of old association or pride of race.

Here he traversed a gallery hung with the portraits of his line; there

caught a glimpse of the pages' antechamber through which he and his

mother had been led when they waited on the Duke; and from the windows

of his closet he overlooked the alleys and terraces where he had

wandered with the hunchback.

One of the Duke's pages came to say that his Highness would receive the

cavaliere when the court rose from dinner; and finding himself with two

hours on his hands, Odo determined to await his kinsman's summons in the

garden. Thither he presently repaired; and was soon, with a mournful

pleasure, retracing the paths he had first explored in such an ecstasy

of wonder. The pleached walks and parterres were in all the freshness of

June. Roses and jasmine mingled on the terrace-walls, citron-trees

ingeniously grafted with red and white carnations stood in Faenza jars

before the lemon-house, and marble nymphs and fauns peeped from thickets

of flowering camellias. A noise of childish voices presently attracted

Odo, and following a tunnel of clipped limes he came out on a theatre

cut in the turf and set about with statues of Apollo and the Muses. A

handful of boys in military dress were performing a series of evolutions

in the centre of this space; and facing them stood a child of about ten

years, in a Colonel's uniform covered with orders, his hair curled and

powdered, a paste-board sword in his hand, and his frail body supported

on one side by a turbaned dwarf, and on the other by an ecclesiastic who

was evidently his governor. The child, as Odo approached, was calling

out his orders to his regiment in a weak shrill voice, moving now here,

now there on his booted tottering legs, as his two supporters guided

him, and painfully trying to flourish the paper weapon that was too

heavy for his nerveless wrist. Behind this strange group stood another

figure, that of a tall heavy man, richly dressed, with a curious

Oriental-looking order on his breast and a veiled somnolent eye which he

kept fixed on the little prince.

Odo had been about to advance and do homage to his cousin; but a sign

from the man in the background arrested him. The manoeuvres were soon

over, the heir was lifted into a little gilded chariot drawn by white

goats, his regiment formed in line and saluted him, and he disappeared

down one of the alleys with his attendants.

This ceremony over, the tall man advanced to Odo with a bow and asked

pardon for the liberty he had taken.

"You are doubtless," said he, "his Highness's cousin, the Cavaliere

Valsecca; and my excuse for intruding between yourself and the prince is

that I am the Duke's physician, Count Heiligenstern, and that the heir

is at present undergoing a course of treatment under my care. His

health, as you probably know, has long been a cause of anxiety to his

illustrious parents, and when I was summoned to Pianura the College of

Physicians had given up all hope of saving him. Since my coming,

however, I flatter myself that a marked change is perceptible. My method

is that of invigorating the blood by exciting the passions most likely

to produce a generous vital ardour. Thus, by organising these juvenile

manoeuvres, I arouse the prince's martial zeal; by encouraging him to

study the history of his ancestors, I evoke his political ambition; by

causing him to be led about the gardens on a pony, accompanied by a

miniature pack of Maltese dogs in pursuit of a tame doe, I stimulate the

passion of the chase; but it is essential to my system that one emotion

should not violently counteract another, and I am therefore obliged to

protect my noble patient from the sudden intrusion of new impressions."

This explanation, delivered in a sententious tone, and with a strong

German accent, seemed to Odo no more than a learned travesty of the

familiar and pathetic expedient of distracting a sick child by the

pretence of manly diversions. He was struck, however, by the physician's

aspect, and would have engaged him in talk had not one of the Duke's

gentlemen appeared with the announcement that his Highness would be

pleased to receive the Cavaliere Valsecca.

Like most dwellings of its kind in Italy, the palace of Pianura

resembled one of those shells which reveal by their outer convolutions

the gradual development of the creature housed within. For two or three

generations after Bracciaforte, the terrible founder of the line, had

made himself master of the republic, his descendants had clung to the

old brick fortress or rocca which the great condottiere had held

successfully against the burghers' arquebuses and the battering-rams of

rival adventurers, and which still glassed its battlements in the slow

waters of the Piana beside the city wall. It was Ascanio, the first

Duke, the correspondent of Politian and Castiglione, who, finding the

ancestral lair too cramped for the court of a humanist prince, had

summoned Luciano da Laurana to build a palace better fitted to his

state. Duke Ascanio, in bronze by Verocchio, still looked up with pride

from the palace-square at the brick and terra-cotta facade with its

fruit-wreathed arches crowned by imperial profiles; but a later prince

found the small rooms and intricate passages of Laurana's structure

inadequate to the pomp of an ally of Leo X., and Vignola added the state

apartments, the sculpture gallery and the libraries.

The palace now passed for one of the wonders of Italy. The Duke's guest,

the witty and learned Aretino, celebrated it in verse, his friend

Cardinal Bembo in prose; Correggio painted the walls of one room, Guilio

Romano the ceiling of another. It seemed that magnificence could go no

farther, till the seventeenth century brought to the throne a Duke who

asked himself how a self-respecting prince could live without a theatre,

a riding-school and an additional wing to lodge the ever-growing train

of court officials who had by this time replaced the feudal men-at-arms.

He answered the question by laying an extra tax on his people and

inviting to Pianura the great Roman architect Carlo Borromini, who

regretfully admitted that his illustrious patron was on the whole less

royally housed than their Highnesses of Mantua and Parma. Within five

years the "cavallerizza," the theatre and the gardens flung defiance at

these aspiring potentates; and again Pianura took precedence of her

rivals. The present Duke's father had expressed the most recent tendency

of the race by the erection of a chapel in the florid Jesuit style; and

the group of buildings thus chronicled in rich durable lines the varying

passions and ambitions of three hundred years of power.

As Odo followed his guide toward the Duke's apartments he remarked a

change in the aspect of the palace. Where formerly the corridors had

been thronged with pages, lacqueys and gaily-dressed cavaliers and

ladies, only a few ecclesiastics now glided by: here a Monsignore in

ermine and lace rochet, attended by his chaplain and secretaries, there

a cowled Dominican or a sober-looking secular priest. The Duke was

lodged in the oldest portion of the palace, and Odo, who had never

visited these apartments, looked with interest at the projecting

sculptured chimney and vaulted ceiling of the pages' ante-chamber, which

had formerly been the guardroom and was still hung with panoplies.

Thence he was led into a gallery lined with scriptural tapestries and

furnished in the heavy style of the seventeenth century. Here he waited

a few moments, hearing the sound of conversation in the room beyond;

then the door of this apartment opened, and a handsome Dominican passed

out, followed by a page who invited Odo to step into the Duke's cabinet.

This was a very small room, completely panelled in delicate wood-carving

touched with gold. Over this panelling, regardless of the beauty of its

design, had been hung a mass of reliquaries and small devotional

bas-reliefs and paintings, making the room appear more like the chapel

of a wonder-working saint than a prince's closet. Here again Odo found

himself alone; but the page presently returned to say that his Highness

was not well and begged the cavaliere to wait on him in his bed-chamber.

The most conspicuous object in this room was a great bedstead raised on

a dais. The plumed posts and sumptuous hangings of the bed gave it an

altar-like air, and the Duke himself, who lay between the curtains, his

wig replaced by a nightcap, a scapular about his neck, and his

shrivelled body wrapped in a brocaded dressing-gown, looked more like a

relic than a man. His heavy under-lip trembled slightly as he offered

his hand to Odo's salute.

"You find me, cousin," said he after a brief greeting, "much troubled by

a question that has of late incessantly disturbed my rest--can the soul,

after full intuition of God, be polluted by the sins of the body?" he

clutched Odo's hand in his burning grasp. "Is it possible that there are

human beings so heedless of their doom that they can go about their

earthly pleasures with this awful problem unsolved? Oh, why has not some

Pope decided it? Why has God left this hideous uncertainty hanging over

us? You know the doctrine of Plotinus--'he who has access to God leaves

the virtues behind him as the images of the gods are left in the outer

temple.' Many of the fathers believed that the Neoplatonists were

permitted to foreshadow in their teachings the revelation of Christ; but

on these occult points much doubt remains, and though certain of the

great theologians have inclined to this interpretation, there are others

who hold that it leans to the heresy of Quietism."

Odo, who had inferred in the Duke's opening words an allusion to the

little prince's ill-health, or to some political anxiety, was at a loss

how to reply to this strange appeal; but after a moment he said, "I have

heard that your Highness's director is a man of great learning and

discrimination. Can he not help your Highness to some decision on this

point?"

The Duke glanced at him suspiciously. "Father Ignazio," said he, "is in

fact well-versed in theology; but there are certain doctrines

inaccessible to all but a few who have received the direct illumination

of heaven, and on this point I cannot feel that his judgment is final."

He wiped the dampness from his sallow forehead and pressed the scapular

to his lips. "May you never know," he cried, "the agony of a father

whose child is dying, of a sovereign who longs to labour for the welfare

of his people, but who is racked by the thought that in giving his mind

to temporal duties and domestic affections while such spiritual

difficulties are still unsolved, he may be preparing for himself an

eternity of torture such as that--" and he pointed to an old and

blackened picture of the Last Judgment that hung on the opposite wall.

Odo tried to frame a soothing rejoinder; but the Duke passionately

interrupted him. "Alas, cousin, no rest is possible for one who has

attained the rapture of the Beatific Vision, yet who trembles lest the

mere mechanical indulgence of the senses may still subject him to the

common penalty of sin! As a man who has devoted himself to the study of

theology is privileged to argue on questions forbidden to the vulgar, so

surely fasting, maceration and ecstasy must liberate the body from the

bondage of prescribed morality. Shall no distinction be recognised

between my conduct and that of the common sot or debauchee whose soul

lies in blind subjection to his lower instincts? I, who have laboured

early and late to remove temptation from my people--who have punished

offences against conduct as unsparingly as spiritual error--I, who have

not scrupled to destroy every picture in my galleries that contained a

nude figure or a wanton attitude--I, who have been blessed from

childhood by tokens of divine favour and miraculous intervention--can I

doubt that I have earned the privileges of that higher state in which

the soul is no longer responsible for the failings of the body? And

yet--and yet--what if I were mistaken?" he moaned. "What if my advisors

have deceived me? Si autem et sic impius sum, quare frustra laboravi?"

And he sank back on his pillows limp as an empty glove.

Alarmed at his disorder, Odo stood irresolute whether to call for help;

but as he hesitated the Duke feebly drew from his bosom a gold key

attached to a slender Venetian chain.

"This," said he, "unlocks the small tortoise-shell cabinet yonder. In it

you will find a phial of clear liquor, a few drops of which will restore

me. 'Tis an essence distilled by the Benedictine nuns of the Perpetual

Adoration and peculiarly effective in accesses of spiritual

disturbance."

Odo complied, and having poured the liquor into a glass, held it to his

cousin's lips. In a moment the Duke's eye revived and he began to speak

in a weak but composed voice, with an air of dignity in singular

contrast to his previous self-abandonment. "I am," said he, "unhappily

subject to such seizures after any prolonged exertion, and a

conversation I have just had with my director has left me in no fit

state to receive you. The cares of government sit heavy on one who has

scarce health enough for the duties of a private station; and were it

not for my son I should long since have withdrawn to the shelter of the

monastic life." He paused and looked at Odo with a melancholy kindness.

"In you," said he, "the native weakness of our complexion appears to

have been tempered by the blood of your mother's house, and your

countenance gives every promise of health and vivacity."

He broke off with a sigh and continued in a more authoritative tone:

"You have learned from Count Trescorre my motive in summoning you to

Pianura. My son's health causes me the liveliest concern, my own is

subject to such seizures as you have just witnessed. I cannot think

that, in this age of infidelity and disorder, God can design to deprive

a Christian state of a line of sovereigns uniformly zealous in the

defence of truth; but the purposes of Heaven are inscrutable, as the

recent suppression of the Society of Jesus has most strangely proved;

and should our dynasty be extinguished I am consoled by the thought that

the rule will pass to one of our house. Of this I shall have more to say

to you in future. Meanwhile your first business is to acquaint yourself

with your new surroundings. The Duchess holds a circle this evening,

where you will meet the court; but I must advise you that the persons

her Highness favours with her intimacy are not those best qualified to

guide and instruct a young man in your position. These you will meet at

the house of the Countess Belverde, one of the Duchess's ladies, a woman

of sound judgment and scrupulous piety, who gathers about her all our

most learned and saintly ecclesiastics. Count Trescorre will instruct

you in all that becomes your position at court, and my director, Father

Ignazio, will aid you in the selection of a confessor. As to the Bishop,

a most worthy and conversable prelate, to whom I would have you show all

due regard, his zeal in spiritual matters is not as great as I could

wish, and in private talk he indulges in a laxity of opinion against

which I cannot too emphatically warn you. Happily, however, Pianura

offers other opportunities of edification. Father Ignazio is a man of

wide learning and inflexible doctrine, and in several of our

monasteries, notably that of the Barnabites, you will find examples of

sanctity and wisdom such as a young man may well devoutly consider. Our

convents also are distinguished for the severity of their rule and the

spiritual privileges accorded them. The Carmelites have every reason to

hope for the beatification of their aged Prioress, and among the nuns of

the Perpetual Adoration is one who has recently received the ineffable

grace of the vulnus divinum. In the conversation of these saintly nuns,

and of the holy Abbot of the Barnabites, you will find the surest

safeguard against those errors and temptations that beset your age." He

leaned back with a gesture of dismissal; but added, reddening slightly,

as Odo prepared to withdraw: "You will oblige me, cousin, when you meet

my physician, Count Heiligenstern, by not touching on the matter of the

restorative you have seen me take."

Odo left his cousin's presence with a feeling of deep discouragement. To

a spirit aware of the new influences abroad, and fresh from contact with

evils rooted in the very foundations of the existing system, there was a

peculiar irony in being advised to seek guidance and instruction in the

society of ecstatic nuns and cloistered theologians. The Duke, with his

sickly soul agrope in a maze of Neoplatonism and probabilism, while his

people groaned under unjust taxes, while knowledge and intellectual

liberty languished in a kind of moral pest-house, seemed to Odo like a

ruler who, in time of famine, should keep the royal granaries locked and

spend his days praying for the succour that his own hand might have

dispensed.

In the tapestry room one of his Highness's gentlemen waited to reconduct

Odo. Their way lay through the portrait gallery of which he had

previously caught a glimpse, and here he begged his guide to leave him.

He felt a sudden desire to meet his unknown ancestors face to face, and

to trace the tendencies which, from the grim Bracciaforte and the

stately sceptical humanist of Leo's age, had mysteriously forced the

race into its ever-narrowing mould. The dusky canvases, hung high in

tarnished escutcheoned frames, presented a continuous chronicle of the

line, from Bracciaforte himself, with his predatory profile outlined by

some early Tuscan hand against the turrets of his impregnable fortress.

Odo lingered long on this image, but it was not till he stood beneath

Piero della Francesca's portrait of the first Duke that he felt the

thrill of kindred instincts. In this grave face, with its sensuous mouth

and melancholy speculative eyes, he recognised the mingled strain of

impressionability and unrest that had reached such diverse issues in his

cousin and himself. The great Duke of the "Golden Age," in his

Titianesque brocade, the statuette of a naked faun at his elbow, and a

faun-like smile on his own ruddy lips, represented another aspect of the

ancestral spirit: the rounded temperament of an age of Cyrenaicism, in

which every moment was a ripe fruit sunned on all sides. A little

farther on, the shadow of the Council of Trent began to fall on the

ducal faces, as the uniform blackness of the Spanish habit replaced the

sumptuous colours of the Renaissance. Here was the persecuting Bishop,

Paul IV.'s ally against the Spaniards, painted by Caravaggio in hauberk

and mailed gloves, with his motto--Etiam cum gladio--surmounting the

episcopal chair; there the Duke who, after a life of hard warfare and

stern piety, had resigned his office to his son and died in the

"angelica vestis" of the tertiary order; and the "beatified" Duchess who

had sold her jewels to buy corn for the poor during the famine of 1670,

and had worn a hair-shirt under a corset that seemed stiff enough to

serve all the purposes of bodily mortification. So the file descended,

the colours fading, the shadows deepening, till it reached a baby

porporato of the last century, who had donned the cardinal's habit at

four, and stood rigid and a little pale in his red robes and lace, with

a crucifix and a skull on the table to which the top of his berretta

hardly reached.

It seemed to Odo as he gazed on the long line of faces as though their

owners had entered one by one into a narrowing defile, where the sun

rose later and set earlier on each successive traveller; and in every

countenance, from that of the first Duke to that of his own peruked and

cuirassed grandfather, he discerned the same symptom of decadency: that

duality of will which, in a delicately-tempered race, is the fatal fruit

of an undisturbed pre-eminence. They had ruled too long and enjoyed too

much; and the poor creature he had just left to his dismal scruples and

forebodings seemed the mere empty husk of long-exhausted passions.

2.11.

The Duchess was lodged in the Borromini wing of the palace, and thither

Odo was conducted that evening.

To eyes accustomed to such ceremonial there was no great novelty in the

troop of powdered servants, the major-domo in his short cloak and chain,

and the florid splendour of the long suite of rooms, decorated in a

style that already appeared over-charged to the more fastidious taste of

the day. Odo's curiosity centred chiefly in the persons peopling this

scene, whose conflicting interests and passions formed, as it were, the

framework of the social structure of Pianura, so that there was not a

labourer in the mulberry-orchards or a weaver in the silk-looms but

depended for his crust of black bread and the leaking roof over his head

on the private whim of some member of that brilliant company.

The Duchess, who soon entered, received Odo with the flighty good-nature

of a roving mind; but as her deep-blue gaze met his her colour rose, her

eyes lingered on his face, and she invited him to a seat at her side.

Maria Clementina was of Austrian descent, and something in her free and

noble port and the smiling arrogance of her manner recalled the aspect

of her distant kinswoman, the young Queen of France. She plied Odo with

a hundred questions, interrupting his answers with a playful abruptness,

and to all appearances more engaged by his person than his discourse.

"Have you seen my son?" she asked. "I remember you a little boy scarce

bigger than Ferrante, whom your mother brought to kiss my hand in the

very year of my marriage. Yes--and you pinched my toy spaniel, sir, and

I was so angry with you that I got up and turned my back on the

company--do you remember? But how should you, being such a child at the

time? Ah, cousin how old you make me feel! I would to God my son looked

as you did then; but the Duke is killing him with his nostrums. The

child was healthy enough when he was born; but what with novenas and

touching of relics and animal magnetism and electrical treatment,

there's not a bone in his little body but the saints and the surgeons

are fighting over its possession. Have you read 'Emile,' cousin, by the

new French author--I forget his name? Well, I would have the child

brought up like 'Emile,' allowed to run wild in the country and grow up

sturdy and hard as a little peasant. But what heresies am I talking! The

book is on the Index, I believe, and if my director knew I had it in my

library I should be set up in the stocks in the market-place and all my

court-gowns burnt at the Church door as a warning against the danger of

importing the new fashions from France!--I hope you hunt, cousin?" she

cried suddenly. "'Tis my chief diversion and one I would have my friends

enjoy with me. His Highness has lately seen fit to cut down my stables,

so that I have scarce forty saddle-horses to my name, and the greater

part but sorry nags at that; yet I can still find a mount for any friend

that will ride with me and I hope to see you among the number if the

Duke can spare you now and then from mass and benediction. His Highness

complains that I am always surrounded by the same company; but is it my

fault if there are not twenty persons at court that can survive a day in

the saddle and a night at cards? Have you seen the Belverde, my mistress

of the robes? She follows the hunt in a litter, cousin, and tells her

beads at the death! I hope you like cards too, cousin, for I would have

all my weaknesses shared by my friends, that they may be the less

disposed to criticise them."

The impression produced on the Duchess by the cavaliere Valsecca was

closely observed by several members of the group surrounding her

Highness. One of these was Count Trescorre, who moved among the

courtiers with an air of ease that seemed to establish without

proclaiming the tie between himself and the Duchess. When Maria

Clementina sat down at play, Trescorre joined Odo and with his usual

friendliness pointed out the most conspicuous figures in the circle. The

Duchess's society, as the Duke had implied, was composed of the livelier

members of the court, chief among whom was the same Don Serafino who had

figured so vividly in the reminiscences of Mirandolina and Cantapresto.

This gentleman, a notorious loose-liver and gamester, with some remains

of good looks and a gay boisterous manner, played the leader of revels

to her Highness's following; and at his heels came the flock of pretty

women and dashing spendthrifts who compose the train of a young and

pleasure-loving princess. On such occasions as the present, however, all

the members of the court were obliged to pay their duty to her Highness;

and conspicuous among these less frequent visitors was the Duke's

director, the suave and handsome Dominican whom Odo had seen leaving his

Highness's closet that afternoon. This ecclesiastic was engaged in

conversation with the Prime Minister, Count Pievepelago, a small feeble

mannikin covered with gold lace and orders. The deference with which the

latter followed the Dominican's discourse excited Odo's attention; but

it was soon diverted by the approach of a lady who joined herself to the

group with an air of discreet familiarity. Though no longer young, she

was still slender and graceful, and her languid eye and vapourish manner

seemed to Odo to veil an uncommon alertness of perception. The rich

sobriety of her dress, the jewelled rosary about her wrist, and most of

all, perhaps, the murderous sweetness of the smile with which the

Duchess addressed her, told him that here was the Countess Belverde; an

inference which Trescorre confirmed.

"The Countess," said he, "or I should rather say the Marchioness of

Boscofolto, since the Duke has just bestowed on her the fief of that

name, is impatient to make your acquaintance; and since you doubtless

remember the saying of the Marquis de Montesquieu, that to know a ruler

one must know his confessor and his mistress, you will perhaps be glad

to seize both opportunities in one."

The Countess greeted Odo with a flattering deference and at once drew

him into conversation with Pievepelago and the Dominican.

"We are discussing," said she, "the details of Prince Ferrante's

approaching visit to the shrine of our Lady of the Mountain. This shrine

lies about half an hour's ride beyond my villa of Boscofolto, where I

hope to have the honour of receiving their Highnesses on their return

from the pilgrimage. The Madonna del Monte, as you doubtless know, has

often preserved the ducal house in seasons of peril, notably during the

great plague of 1630 and during the famine in the Duchess Polixena's

time, when her Highness, of blessed memory, met our Lady in the streets

distributing bread, in the dress of a peasant-woman from the hills, but

with a necklace made of blood-drops instead of garnets. Father Ignazio

has lately counselled the little prince's visiting in state the

protectress of his line, and his Highness's physician, Count

Heiligenstern, does not disapprove the plan. In fact," she added, "I

understand that he thinks all special acts of piety beneficial, as

symbolising the inward act by which the soul incessantly strives to

reunite itself to the One."

The Dominican glanced at Odo with a smile. "The Count's dialectics,"

said he, "might be dangerous were they a little clearer; but we must

hope he distinguishes more accurately between his drugs than his

dogmas."

"But I am told," the Prime Minister here interposed in a creaking rusty

voice, "that her Highness is set against the pilgrimage and will put

every obstacle in the way of its being performed."

The Countess sighed and cast down her eyes, the Dominican remained

silent, and Trescorre said quietly to Odo, "Her Highness would be

pleased to have you join her in a game at basset." As they crossed the

room he added in a low tone: "The Duchess, in spite of her remarkable

strength of character, is still of an age to be readily open to new

influences. I observed she was much taken by your conversation, and you

would be doing her a service by engaging her not to oppose this

pilgrimage to Boscofolto. We have Heiligenstern's word that it cannot

harm the prince, it will produce a good impression on the people, and it

is of vital importance to her Highness not to side against the Duke in

such matters." And he withdrew with a smile as Odo approached the

card-table.

Odo left the Duchess's circle with an increased desire to penetrate more

deeply into the organisation of the little world about him, to trace the

operation of its various parts, and to put his hand on the mainspring

about which they revolved; and he wondered whether Gamba, whose

connection with the ducal library must give him some insight into the

affairs of the court, might not prove as instructive a guide through

this labyrinth as through the mazes of the ducal garden.

The Duke's library filled a series of rooms designed in the classical

style of the cinque-cento. On the very threshold Odo was conscious of

leaving behind the trivial activities of the palace, with the fantastic

architecture which seemed their natural setting. Here all was based on a

noble permanence of taste, a convergence of accumulated effort toward a

chosen end; and the door was fittingly surmounted by Seneca's definition

of the wise man's state: "Omnia illi secula ut deo serviunt."

Odo would gladly have lingered among the books which filled the rooms

with an incense-like aroma of old leather. His imagination caressed in

passing the yellowish vellum backs, the worn tooling of Aldine folios,

the heavy silver clasps of ancient chronicles and psalters; but his

first object was to find Gamba and renew the conversation of the

previous day. In this he was disappointed. The only occupant of the

library was the hunchback's friend and protector, the abate Crescenti, a

tall white-haired priest with the roseate gravity and benevolent air of

a donator in some Flemish triptych. The abate, courteously welcoming

Odo, explained that he had despatched his assistant to the Benedictine

monastery to copy certain ancient records of transactions between that

order and the Lords of Valsecca, and added that Gamba, on his return,

should at once be apprised of the cavaliere's wish to see him.

The abate himself had been engaged, when his visitor entered, in

collating manuscripts, but on Odo's begging him to return to his work,

he said with a smile: "I do not suffer from an excess of interruptions,

for the library is the least visited portion of the palace, and I am

glad to welcome any who are disposed to inspect its treasures. I know

not, cavaliere," he added, "if the report of my humble labours has ever

reached you;" and on Odo's affirmative gesture he went on, with the

eagerness of a shy man who gathers assurance from the intelligence of

his listener: "Such researches into the rude and uncivilised past seem

to me as essential to the comprehension of the present as the mastering

of the major premiss to the understanding of a syllogism; and to those

who reproach me for wasting my life over the chronicles of barbarian

invasions and the records of monkish litigations, instead of

contemplating the illustrious deeds of Greek sages and Roman heroes, I

confidently reply that it is more useful to a man to know his own

father's character than that of a remote ancestor. Even in this quiet

retreat," he went on, "I hear much talk of abuses and of the need for

reform; and I often think that if they who rail so loudly against

existing institutions would take the trouble to trace them to their

source, and would, for instance, compare this state as it is today with

its condition five hundred or a thousand years ago, instead of measuring

it by the standard of some imaginary Platonic republic, they would find,

if not less subject for complaint, yet fuller means of understanding and

remedying the abuses they discover."

This view of history was one so new in the abate Crescenti's day that it

surprised Odo with the revelation of unsuspected possibilities. How was

it that among the philosophers whose works he had studied, none had

thought of tracing in the social and political tendencies of the race

the germ of wrongs so confidently ascribed to the cunning of priests and

the rapacity of princes? Odo listened with growing interest while

Crescenti, encouraged by his questions, pointed out how the abuses of

feudalism had arisen from the small land-owner's need of protection

against the northern invader, as the concentration of royal prerogative

had been the outcome of the king's intervention between his great

vassals and the communes. The discouragement which had obscured Odo's

outlook since his visit to Pontesordo was cleared away by the discovery

that in a sympathetic study of the past might lie the secret of dealing

with present evils. His imagination, taking the intervening obstacles at

a bound, arrived at once at the general axiom to which such inductions

pointed; and if he afterward learned that human development follows no

such direct line of advance, but must painfully stumble across the

wastes of error, prejudice and ignorance, while the theoriser traverses

the same distance with a stroke of his speculative pinions; yet the

influence of these teachings tempered his judgments with charity and

dignified his very failures by a tragic sense of their inevitableness.

Crescenti suggested that Gamba should wait on Odo that evening; but the

latter, being uncertain how far he might dispose of his time, enquired

where the hunchback lodged, with a view of sending for him at a

convenient moment. Having dined at the Duchess's table, and soon

wearying of the vapid company of her associates, he yielded to the

desire for contrast that so often guided his course, and set out toward

sunset in search of Gamba's lodging.

It was his first opportunity of inspecting the town at leisure, and for

a while he let his curiosity lead him as it would. The streets near the

palace were full of noble residences, recording, in their sculptured

doorways, in the wrought-iron work of torch-holders and window-grilles,

and in every architectural detail, the gradual change of taste that had

transformed the machicolations of the mediaeval fighter into the open

cortiles and airy balconies of his descendant. Here and there, amid

these inveterate records of dominion, rose the monuments of a mightier

and more ancient power. Of these churches and monasteries the greater

number, dating only from the ascendancy of the Valseccas, showed an

ordered and sumptuous architecture; but one or two buildings surviving

from the period of the free city stood out among them with the austerity

of desert saints in a throng of court ecclesiastics. The columns of the

Cathedral porch were still supported on featureless porphyry lions worn

smooth by generations of loungers; and above the octagonal baptistery

ran a fantastic basrelief wherein the spirals of the vine framed an

allegory of men and monsters symbolising, in their mysterious conflicts,

the ever-recurring Manicheism of the middle ages. Fresh from his talk

with Crescenti, Odo lingered curiously on these sculptures, which but

the day before he might have passed by as the efforts of ignorant

workmen, but which now seemed full of the significance that belongs to

any incomplete expression of human thought or feeling. Of their relation

to the growth of art he had as yet no clear notion; but as evidence of

sensations that his forefathers had struggled to record, they touched

him like the inarticulate stammerings in which childhood strives to

convey its meaning.

He found Gamba's lodging on the upper floor of a decayed palace in one

of the by-lanes near the Cathedral. The pointed arcades of this ancient

building enclosed the remains of floriated mouldings, and the walls of

the court showed traces of fresco-painting; but clothes-lines now hung

between the arches, and about the well-head in the centre of the court

sat a group of tattered women with half-naked children playing in the

dirt at their feet. One of these women directed Odo to the staircase

which ascended between damp stone walls to Gamba's door. This was opened

by the hunchback himself, who, with an astonished exclamation, admitted

his visitor to a scantily furnished room littered with books and papers.

A child sprawled on the floor, and a young woman, who had been sewing in

the fading light of the attic window, snatched him up as Odo entered.

Her back being turned to the light, he caught only a slender youthful

outline; but something in the turn of the head, the shrinking curve of

the shoulders, carried him back to the little barefoot figure cowering

in a corner of the kitchen at Pontesordo, while the farm-yard rang with

Filomena's call--"Where are you then, child of iniquity?"

"Momola--don't you know me?" he exclaimed.

She hung back trembling, as though the sound of his voice roused an echo

of fear; but Gamba, reddening slightly, took her hand and led her

forward.

"It is, indeed," said he, "your excellency's old playmate, the Momola of

Pontesordo, who consents to share my poverty and who makes me forget it

by the tenderness of her devotion."

But Momola, at this, found voice. "Oh, sir," she cried, "it is he who

took me in when I was half-dead and starving, who many a time went

hungry to feed me, and who cares for the child as if it were his own!"

As she stood there, in her half-wild hollowed-eyed beauty, which seemed

a sickly efflorescence of the marshes, pressing to her breast another

"child of iniquity" as pale and elfish as her former self, she seemed to

Odo the embodiment of ancient wrongs, risen from the wasted soil to

haunt the dreams of its oppressors.

Gamba shrugged his shoulders. "Why," said he, "a child of my own is a

luxury I am never likely to possess as long as I have wit to remember

the fundamental axiom of philosophy: entia non sunt multiplicanda

praeter necessitatum; so it is natural enough fate should single me out

to repair the negligence of those who have failed to observe that

admirable principle. And now," he added, turning gently to Momola, "it

is time to put the boy to bed."

When the door had closed on her Odo turned to Gamba. "I could learn

nothing at Pontesordo," he said. "They seemed unwilling to speak of her.

What is her story and where did you first know her?"

Gamba's face darkened. "You will remember, cavaliere," he said, "that

some time after your departure from Pianura I passed into the service of

the Marquess of Cerveno, then a youth of about twenty, who combined with

graceful manners and a fair exterior a nature so corrupt and cowardly

that he seemed like some such noble edifice as this, designed to house

great hopes and high ambitions, but fallen to base uses and become the

shelter of thieves and prostitutes. Prince Ferrante being sickly from

his birth, the Marquess was always looked on as the Duke's successor,

and to Trescorre, who even then, as Master of the Horse, cherished the

ambitions he has since realised, no prospect could have been more

distasteful. My noble brother, to do him justice, has always hated the

Jesuits, who, as you doubtless know, were all-powerful here before the

recent suppression of the Order. The Marquess of Cerveno was as

completely under their control as the Duke is under that of the

Dominicans, and Trescorre knew that with the Marquess's accession his

own rule must end. He did his best to gain an influence over his future

ruler, but failing in this resolved to ruin him.

"Cerveno, like all your house, was passionately addicted to the chase,

and spent much time hunting in the forest of Pontesordo. One day the

stag was brought to bay in the farm-yard of the old manor, and there

Cerveno saw Momola, then a girl of sixteen, of a singular wild beauty

which sickness and trouble have since effaced. The young Marquess was

instantly taken; and though hitherto indifferent to women, yielded so

completely to his infatuation that Trescorre, ever on the alert, saw in

it an unexpected means to his end. He instantly married Momola to

Giannozzo, whom she feared and hated; he schooled Giannozzo in the part

of the jealous and vindictive husband, and by the liberal use of money

contrived that Momola, while suffered to encourage the Marquess's

addresses, should be kept so close that Cerveno could not see her save

by coming to Pontesordo. This was the first step in the plan; the next

was to arrange that Momola should lure her lover to the hunting-lodge on

the edge of the chase. This lodge, as your excellency may remember, lies

level with the marsh, and so open to noxious exhalations that a night's

sojourn there may be fatal. The infernal scheme was carried out with the

connivance of the scoundrels at the farm, who had no scruples about

selling the girl for a few ducats; and as to Momola, can you wonder that

her loathing of Giannozzo and of her wretched life at Pontesordo threw

her defenceless into Trescorre's toils? All was cunningly planned to

exasperate Cerveno's passion and Momola's longing to escape; and at

length, pressed by his entreaties and innocently carrying out the

designs of his foe, the poor girl promised to meet him after night-fall

at the hunting-lodge. The secrecy of the adventure, and the peril to

which it exposed him (for Trescorre had taken care to paint Giannozzo

and his father in the darkest colours) were fuel to Cerveno's passion,

and he went night after night to Pontesordo. The time was August, when

the marsh breathes death, and the Duke, apprised of his favourite's

imprudence, forbade his returning to the chase.

"Nothing could better have served Trescorre; for opposition spurred the

Marquess's languid temper, and he had now the incredible folly to take

up his residence in the lodge. Within three weeks the fever held him. He

was at once taken to Pianura, and on recovering from his seizure was

sent to take the mountain air at the baths of Lucca. But the poison was

in his blood. He never regained more than a semblance of health, and his

madness having run its course, his passion for Momola turned to hate of

the poor girl to whom he ascribed his destruction. Giannozzo, meanwhile,

terrified by the report that the Duke had winded the intrigue, and

fearing to be charged with connivance, thought to prove his innocence by

casting off his wife and disowning her child.

"What part I played in this grim business I leave your excellency to

conceive. As the Marquess's creature I was forced to assist at the

spectacle without power to stay its consequences; but when the child was

born I carried the news to my master and begged him to come to the

mother's aid. For answer, he had me beaten by his lacqueys and flung out

of his house. I stomached the beating and addressed myself to Trescorre.

My noble brother, whose insight is seldom at fault, saw that I knew

enough to imperil him. The Marquess was dying and his enemy could afford

to be generous. He gave me a little money and the following year

obtained from the Duke my appointment as assistant librarian. In this

way I was able to give Momola a home, and to save her child from the

Innocenti. She and I, cavaliere, are the misshapen offspring of that

cruel foster-parent, who rears more than half the malefactors in the

state; but please heaven the boy shall have a better start in life, and

perhaps grow up to destroy some of the evils on which that cursed

charity thrives."