This narrative, and the sight of Momola and her child, followed so

strangely on the spectacle of sordid misery he had witnessed at

Pontesordo, that an inarticulate pity held Odo by the throat. Gamba's

anger against the people at the farm seemed as senseless as their own

cruelty to their animals. What were they all--Momola, her child, and her

persecutors--but a sickly growth of the decaying social order? He felt

an almost physical longing for fresh air, light, the rush of a purifying

wind through the atmosphere of moral darkness that surrounded him.

2.12.

To relieve the tension of his thoughts he set forth to Gamba the purpose

of his visit.

"I am," said he, "much like a stranger at a masked ball, where all the

masks are acquainted with each other's disguises and concerted to

mystify the visitor. Among the persons I have met at court several have

shown themselves ready to guide me through this labyrinth; but, till

they themselves unmask and declare their true characters, I am doubtful

whither they may lead me; nor do I know of any so well fitted as

yourself to give me a clue to my surroundings. As for my own disguise,"

he added with a smile, "I believe I removed it sufficiently on our first

meeting to leave you no doubt as to the use to which your information

will be put."

Gamba, who seemed touched by this appeal, nevertheless hesitated before

replying. At length he said: "I have the fullest trust in your

excellency's honour; but I must remind you that during your stay here

you will be under the closest observation and that any opinions you

express will at once be attributed to the persons you are known to

frequent. I would not," he continued hastily, "say this for myself

alone, but I have two mouths to feed and my views are already under

suspicion."

Reassured by Odo's protestations, or rather, perhaps, by the more

convincing warrant of his look and manner, Gamba proceeded to give him a

detailed description of the little world in which chance had placed

them.

"If you have seen the Duke," said he, "I need not tell you that it is

not he who governs the duchy. We are ruled at present by a triumvirate

consisting of the Belverde, the Dominican and Trescorre. Pievepelago,

the Prime Minister, is a dummy put in place by the Jesuits and kept

there by the rivalries of the other three; but he is in his dotage and

the courtiers are already laying wagers as to his successor. Many think

Father Ignazio will replace him, but I stake my faith on Trescorre. The

Duke dislikes him, but he is popular with the middle class, who, since

they have shaken off the yoke of the Jesuits, would not willingly see an

ecclesiastic at the head of the state. The duchess's influence is also

against the Dominican, for her Highness, being, as you know, connected

with the Austrian court, is by tradition unfavourable to the Church

party. The Duchess's preferences would weigh little with the Duke were

it not that she is sole heiress to the old Duke of Monte Alloro, and

that any attempt to bring that principality under the control of the

Holy See might provoke the interference of Austria.

"In so ticklish a situation I see none but Trescorre to maintain the

political balance. He has been adroit enough to make himself necessary

to the Duchess without alienating the Duke; he has introduced one or two

trifling reforms that have given him a name for liberality in spite of

the heavy taxes with which he has loaded the peasantry; and has in short

so played his cards as to profit by the foibles of both parties. Her

Highness," he continued, in reply to a question of Odo's, "was much

taken by him when she first came to Pianura; and before her feeling had

cooled he had contrived to make himself indispensable to her. The

Duchess is always in debt; and Trescorre, as Comptroller of Finance,

holds her by her besetting weakness. Before his appointment her

extravagance was the scandal of the town. She borrowed from her ladies,

her pages, her very lacqueys; when she went on a visit to her uncle of

Monte Alloro she pocketed the money he bestowed on her servants; nay,

she was even accused of robbing the Marchioness of Pievepelago, who,

having worn one evening a diamond necklace which excited her Highness's

admiration, was waylaid on the way home and the jewels torn from her

neck by a crowd of masked ruffians among whom she is said to have

recognised one of the ducal servants. These are doubtless idle reports;

but it is certain that Trescorre's appointment engaged him still more to

the Duchess by enabling him to protect her from such calumnies; while by

increasing the land taxes he has discharged the worst of her debts and

thus made himself popular with the tradesmen she had ruined. Your

excellency must excuse my attempting to paint the private character of

her Highness. Such facts as I have reported are of public notoriety, but

to exceed them would be an unwarranted presumption. I know she has the

name of being affable to her dependents, capable of a fitful generosity,

and easily moved by distress; and it is certain that her domestic

situation has been one to excite pity and disarm criticism.

"With regard to his Highness, it is difficult either to detect his

motives or to divine his preferences. His youth was spent in pious

practices; and a curious reason is given for the origin of this habit.

He was educated, as your excellency is doubtless aware, by a French

philosopher of the school of Hobbes; and it is said that in the interval

of his tasks the poor Duke, bewildered by his governor's distinctions

between conception and cognition, and the object and the sentient, used

to spend his time praying the saints to assist him in his atheistical

studies; indeed a satire of the day ascribes him as making a novena to

the Virgin to obtain a clearer understanding of the universality of

matter. Others with more likelihood aver that he frequented the churches

to escape from the tyranny of his pedagogue; and it is certain that from

one cause or another his education threw him into the opposite extreme

of a superstitious and mechanical piety. His marriage, his differences

with the Duchess, and the evil influence of Cerveno, exposed him to new

temptations, and for a time he led a life which seemed to justify the

worst charges of the enemies of materialism. Recent events have flung

him back on the exaggerated devotion of his youth, and now, when his

health permits, he spends his time serving mass, singing in the choir at

benediction and making pilgrimages to the relics of the saints in the

different churches of the duchy.

"A few years since, at the instigation of his confessor, he destroyed

every picture in the ducal gallery that contained any naked figure or

represented any subject offensive to religion. Among them was Titian's

famous portrait of Duke Ascanio's mistress, known as the Goldsmith's

Daughter, and a Venus by the Venetian painter Giorgione, so highly

esteemed in its day that Pope Leo X. is said to have offered in exchange

for it the gift of a papal benefice, and a Cardinal's hat for Duke

Guidobaldo's younger son. His Highness, moreover, impedes the

administration of justice by resisting all attempts to restrict the

Church's right of sanctuary, and upholds the decree forbidding his

subjects to study at the University of Pavia, where, as you know, the

natural sciences are professed by the ablest scholars of Italy. He

allows no public duties to interfere with his private devotions, and

whatever the urgency of affairs, gives no audience to his ministers on

holydays; and a Cardinal a latere recently passing through the duchy on

his return to Rome was not received at the Duke's table because he

chanced to arrive on a Friday.

"His Highness's fears for Prince Ferrante's health have drawn a swarm of

quacks to Pianura, and the influence of the Church is sometimes

counteracted by that of the physicians with whom the Duke surrounds

himself. The latest of these, the famous Count Heiligenstern, who is

said to have performed some remarkable cures by means of the electrical

fluid and of animal magnetism, has gained such an ascendancy over the

Duke that some suspect him of being an agent of the Austrian court,

while others declare that he is a Jesuit en robe courte. But just at

present the people scent a Jesuit under every habit, and it is even

rumoured that the Belverde is secretly affiliated to a female branch of

the Society. With such a sovereign and such ministers, your excellency

need not be told how the state is governed. Trescorre, heaven save the

mark! represents the liberal party; but his liberalism is like the

generosity of the unarmed traveller who throws his purse to a foot-pad;

and Father Ignazio is at hand to see that the people are not bettered at

the expense of the Church.

"As to the Duke, having no settled policy, and being governed only

through his fears, he leans first to one influence and then to another;

but since the suppression of the Jesuits nothing can induce him to

attack any ecclesiastical privileges. The diocese of Pianura holds a

fief known as the Caccia del Vescovo, long noted as the most lawless

district of the duchy. Before the death of the late Pope, Trescorre had

prevailed on the Duke to annex it to the principality; but the dreadful

fate of Ganganelli has checked bolder sovereigns than his Highness in

their attempts on the immunities of the Church, and one of the fairest

regions of our unhappy state remains a barren waste, the lair of outlaws

and assassins, and a menace to the surrounding country. His Highness is

not incapable of generous impulses and his occasional acts of humanity

might endear him to his people were it not that they despise him for

being the creature of his favourites. Thus, the gift of Boscofolto to

the Belverde has excited the bitterest discontent; for the Countess is

notorious for her cruel exactions, and it is certain that at her death

this rich fief will revert to the Church. And now," Gamba ended with a

smile, "I have made known to your excellency the chief characters in the

masque, as rumour depicts them to the vulgar. As to the court, like the

government, it is divided into two parties: the Duke's, headed by the

Belverde, and containing the staider and more conservative members of

the Church and nobility; and the Duchess's, composed of every fribble

and flatterer, every gamester and rake, every intriguing woman and

vulgar parvenu that can worm a way into her favour. In such an

atmosphere you may fancy how knowledge thrives. The Duke's library

consists of a few volumes of theological casuistry, and her Highness

never opens a book unless it be to scandalise her husband by reading

some prohibited pamphlet from France. The University, since the fall of

the Jesuits, has been in charge of the Barnabite order, and, for aught I

know, the Ptolemaic system is still taught there, together with the

dialectic of Aristotle. As to science, it is anathema; and the press

being subject to the restrictions of the Holy Office, and the University

closed to modern thought, but few scholars are to be found in the duchy,

save those who occupy themselves with belles-lettres, or, like the abate

Crescenti, are engaged in historical research. Pianura, even in the late

Duke's day, had its circle of lettered noblemen who patronised the arts

and founded the local Arcadia; but such pursuits are out of fashion, the

Arcadia languishes, and the Bishop of Pianura is the only dignitary that

still plays the Mecaenas. His lordship, whose theological laxity and

coolness toward the Holy Office have put him out of favour with the

Duke, has, I am told, a fine cabinet of paintings (some of them, it is

rumoured, the very pictures that his Highness ordered to be burnt) and

the episcopal palace swarms with rhyming abatini, fashionable

playwrights and musicians, and the travelling archeologists who hawk

their antiques about from one court to another. Here you may assist at

interminable disputes as to the relative merits of Tasso and Ariosto, or

listen to a learned dissertation on the verse engraved on a carnelian

stone; but as to the questions now agitating the world, they are held of

less account than a problem in counterpoint or the construction of a

doubtful line in Ovid. As long as Truth goes naked she can scarce hope

to be received in good company; and her appearance would probably cause

as much confusion among the Bishop's literati as in the councils of the

Holy Office."

The old analogy likening the human mind to an imperfect mirror, which

modifies the images it reflects, occurred more than once to Odo during

the hunchback's lively delineation. It was impossible not to remember

that the speaker owed his education to the charity of the order he

denounced; and this fact suggested to Odo that the other lights and

shadows in the picture might be disposed with more art than accuracy.

Still, they doubtless embodied a negative truth, and Odo thought it

probable that such intellectual diversion as he could hope for must be

sought in the Bishop's circle.

It was two days later that he first beheld that prelate, heading the

ducal pilgrimage to the shrine of the mountain Virgin. The day had

opened with a confused flight of chimes from every bell-tower in

Pianura, as though a migratory flock of notes had settled for a moment

on the roofs and steeples of the city. The ducal party set forth early

from the palace, but the streets were already spanned with arches and

garlands of foliage, tapestries and religious paintings decked the

facades of the wealthier houses, and at every street-shrine a cluster of

candle-flames hovered like yellow butterflies above the freshly-gathered

flowers. The windows were packed with spectators, and the crowds who

intended to accompany the pilgrimage were already gathering, with their

painted and gilt candles, from every corner of the town. Each church and

monastery door poured forth its priests or friars to swell the line, and

the various lay confraternities, issuing in their distinctive dress from

their "lodges" or assembly-rooms, formed a link between the secular and

religious divisions of the procession. The market-place was strewn with

sand and sweet herbs; and here, on the doorsteps of the Cathedral,

between the featureless porphyry lions, the Bishop waited with his

red-robed chapter, and the deacons carrying the painted banners of the

diocese. Seen thus, with the cloth-of-gold dalmatic above his pontifical

tunic, the mitre surmounting his clear-cut impassive face, and the

crozier held aloft in his jewelled gloves, he might have stood for a

chryselephantine divinity in the porch of some pagan temple.

Odo, riding beside the Duke's litter, had leisure to note not only the

diverse features of the procession but their varying effect on the

spectators. It was plain that, as Trescorre had said, the pilgrimage was

popular with the people. That imaginative sensuousness which has

perpetually renewed the Latin Church by giving form and colour to her

dogmatic abstractions, by transforming every successive phase of her

belief into something to be seen and handled, found an irresistible

outlet in a ceremony that seemed to combine with its devotional intent a

secret element of expiation. The little prince was dimly felt to be

paying for the prodigality of his fathers, to be in some way a link of

suffering between the tongue-tied misery of the fields and the insolent

splendour of the court; and a vague faith in the vicarious efficacy of

his devotion drew the crowd into momentary sympathy with its rulers. Yet

this was but an underlying element in the instinctive delight of the

people in the outward forms of their religion. Odo's late experiences

had wakened him to the influences acting on that obscure substratum of

human life that still seemed, to most men of his rank, of no more

account than the brick lining of their marble-coated palaces. As he

watched the mounting excitement of the throng, and pictured to himself

the lives suddenly lit up by this pledge of unseen promises, he wondered

that the enemies of the Church should ascribe her predominance to any

cause but the natural needs of the heart. The people lived in unlit

hovels, for there was a tax on mental as well as on material windows;

but here was a light that could pierce the narrowest crevice and scatter

the darkness with a single ray.

Odo noted with equal interest the impression produced by the various

members of the court and the Church dignitaries. The Duke's litter was

coldly received, but a pitying murmur widened about the gilt chair in

which Prince Ferrante was seated at his governor's side, and the

approach of Trescorre, mounted on a fine horse and dressed with his

usual sober elegance, woke a shout that made him for a moment the

central figure of the procession. The Bishop was none too warmly

welcomed; but when Crescenti appeared, white-haired and erect among the

parish priests, the crowd swayed toward him like grasses in the suction

of a current; and one of the Duke's gentlemen, seeing Odo's surprise,

said with a smile: "No one does more good in Pianura than our learned

librarian."

A different and still more striking welcome awaited the Duchess, who

presently appeared on her favourite white hackney, surrounded by the

members of her household. Her reluctance to take part in the pilgrimage

had been overcome by the exhilaration of showing herself to the public,

and as she rode along in her gold-embroidered habit and plumed hat she

was just such an image of radiant and indulgent sovereignty as turns

enforced submission into a romantic allegiance. Her flushing cheek and

kindled eye showed the reaction of the effect she produced, and if her

subjects forgot her debts, her violences and follies, she was perhaps

momentarily transformed into the being their enthusiasm created. She was

at any rate keenly alive to the admiration she excited and eager to

enhance it by those showy impulses of benevolence that catch the public

eye; as when, at the city gates, she stopped her horse to intervene in

behalf of a soldier who had been put under arrest for some slight

infraction of duty, and then rode on enveloped in the passionate

shouting of the crowd.

The shrine at which the young prince was to pay his devotions stood just

beyond the city, on the summit of one of the low knolls which pass for

hills in the level landscape of Pianura. The white-columned church with

its classical dome and portico had been erected as a thank-offering

after the plague of 1630, and the nave was lined with life-sized votive

figures of Dukes and Duchesses clad in the actual wigs and robes that

had dressed their transient grandeur. As the procession wound into the

church, to the ringing of bells and the chanting of the choir, Odo was

struck by the spectacle of that line of witnesses, watching in

glassy-eyed irony the pomp and display to which their moldering robes

and tarnished insignia seemed to fix so brief a term. Once or twice

already he had felt the shows of human power as no more than vanishing

reflections on the tide of being; and now, as he knelt near the shrine,

with its central glitter of jewels and its nimbus of wavering lights,

and listened to the reiterated ancient wail:

"Mater inviolata, ora pro nobis!

Virgo veneranda, ora pro nobis!

Speculum justitiae, ora pro nobis!"

it seemed to him as though the bounds of life and death were merged, and

the sumptuous group of which he formed a part already dusted over with

oblivion.

2.13.

Spite of the Mountain Madonna's much-vaunted powers, the first effect of

the pilgrimage was to provoke a serious indisposition in the Duke.

Exhausted by fasting and emotion, he withdrew to his apartments and for

several days denied himself to all but Heiligenstern, who was suspected

by some of suffering his patient's disorder to run its course with a

view to proving the futility of such remedies. This break in his

intercourse with his kinsman left Odo free to take the measure of his

new surroundings. The company most naturally engaging him was that which

surrounded the Duchess; but he soon wearied of the trivial diversions it

offered. It had ever been necessary to him that his pleasures should

touch the imagination as well as the senses; and with such refinement of

enjoyment the gallants of Pianura were unacquainted. Odo indeed

perceived with a touch of amusement that, in a society where Don

Serafino set the pace, he must needs lag behind his own lacquey.

Cantapresto had, in fact, been hailed by the Bishop's nephew with a

cordiality that proclaimed them old associates in folly; and the

soprano's manner seemed to declare that, if ever he had held the candle

for Don Serafino, he did not grudge the grease that might have dropped

on his cassock. He was soon prime favourite and court buffoon in the

Duchess's circle, organising pleasure-parties, composing scenarios for

her Highness's private theatre, and producing at court any comedian or

juggler the report of whose ability reached him from the market-place.

Indefatigable in the contriving of such diversions, he soon virtually

passed out of Odo's service into that of her Highness: a circumstance

which the young man the less regretted as it left him freer to cultivate

the acquaintance of Gamba and his friends without exposing them to

Cantapresto's espionage.

Odo had felt himself specially drawn toward the abate Crescenti; and the

afternoon after their first meeting he had repaired to the librarian's

dwelling. Crescenti was the priest of an ancient parish lying near the

fortress; and his tiny house was wedged in an angle of the city walls,

like a bird's nest in the mouth of a disused canon. A long flight of

steps led up to his study, which on the farther side opened level with a

vine-shaded patch of herbs and damask roses in the projection of a

ruined bastion. This interior, the home of studious peace, was as

cheerful and well-ordered as its inmate's mind; and Odo, seated under

the vine pergola in the late summer light, and tasting the abate's Val

Pulicella while he turned over the warped pages of old codes and

chronicles, felt the stealing charm of a sequestered life.

He had learned from Gamba that Crescenti was a faithful parish priest as

well as an assiduous scholar, but he saw that the librarian's

beneficence took that purely personal form which may coexist with a

serene acceptance of the general evils underlying particular hardships.

His charities were performed in the old unquestioning spirit of the

Roman distribution of corn; and doubtless the good man who carries his

loaf of bread and his word of hope into his neighbour's hovel reaps a

more tangible return than the lonely thinker who schemes to undermine

the strongholds of injustice. Still there was a perplexing contrast

between the superficiality of Crescenti's moral judgments and the

breadth and penetration of his historic conceptions. Odo was too

inexperienced to reflect that a man's sense of the urgency of

improvement lies mainly in the line of his talent: as the merchant is

persuaded that the roads most in need of mending are those on which his

business makes him travel. Odo himself was already conscious of living

in a many-windowed house, with outlooks diverse enough to justify more

than one view of the universe; but he had no conception of that

concentration of purpose that may make the mind's flight to its goal as

direct and unvarying as the course of a homing bird. The talk turning on

Gamba, Crescenti spoke of the help which the hunchback gave him in his

work among the poor.

"His early hardships," said he, "have given him an insight into

character that my happier circumstances have denied me; and he has more

than once been the means of reclaiming some wretch that I despaired of.

Unhappily, his parts and learning are beyond his station, and will not

let him rest in the performance of his duties. His mind, I often tell

him, is like one of those inn parlours hung with elaborate maps of the

three Heretical Cities; whereas the only topography with which the

virtuous traveller need be acquainted is that of the Heavenly City to

which all our journeyings should tend. The soundness of his heart

reassures me as to this distemper of the reason; but others are less

familiar with his good qualities and I tremble for the risks to which

his rashness may expose him."

The librarian went on to say that Gamba had a pretty poetical gift which

he was suspected of employing in the composition of anonymous satires on

the court, the government and the Church. At that period every Italian

town was as full of lampoons as a marsh of mosquitoes, and it was as

difficult in the one case as the other for the sufferer to detect the

specific cause of his sting. The moment in Italy was a strange one. The

tide of reform had been turned back by the very act devised to hasten

it: the suppression of the Society of Jesus. The shout of liberation

that rose over the downfall of the order had sunk to a guarded whisper.

The dark legend already forming around Ganganelli's death, the hint of

that secret liquor distilled for the order's use in a certain convent of

Perugia, hung like a menace on the political horizon; and the disbanded

Society seemed to have tightened its hold on the public conscience as a

dying man's clutch closes on his victorious enemy.

So profoundly had the Jesuits impressed the world with the sense of

their mysterious power that they were felt to be like one of those

animal organisms which, when torn apart, carry on a separate existence

in every fragment. Ganganelli's bull had provided against their exerting

any political influence, or controlling opinion as confessors or as

public educators; but they were known to be everywhere in Italy, either

hidden in other orders, or acting as lay agents of foreign powers, as

tutors in private families, or simply as secular priests. Even the

confiscation of their wealth did not seem to diminish the popular sense

of their strength. Perhaps because that strength had never been

completely explained, even by their immense temporal advantages, it was

felt to be latent in themselves, and somehow capable of withstanding

every kind of external assault. They had moreover benefited by the

reaction which always follows on the breaking up of any great

organisation. Their detractors were already beginning to forget their

faults and remember their merits. The people had been taught to hate the

Society as the possessor of wealth and privileges which should have been

theirs; but when the Society fell its possessions were absorbed by the

other powers, and in many cases the people suffered from abuses and

maladministration which they had not known under their Jesuit landlords.

The aristocracy had always been in sympathy with the order, and in many

states the Jesuits had been banished simply as a measure of political

expediency, a sop to the restless masses. In these cases the latent

power of the order was concealed rather than diminished by the pretence

of a more liberal government, and everywhere, in one form or another,

the unseen influence was felt to be on the watch for those who dared to

triumph over it too soon.

Such conditions fostered the growth of social satire. Constructive

ambition was forced back into its old disguises, and ridicule of

individual weaknesses replaced the general attack on beliefs and

institutions. Satirical poems in manuscript passed from hand to hand in

coffee-houses, casinos and drawing-rooms, and every conspicuous incident

in social or political life was borne on a biting quatrain to the

confines of the state. The Duke's gift of Boscofolto to the Countess

Belverde had stirred up a swarm of epigrams, and the most malignant

among them, Crescenti averred, were openly ascribed to Gamba.

"A few more imprudences," he added, "must cost him his post; and if your

excellency has any influence with him I would urge its being used to

restrain him from such excesses."

Odo, on taking his leave of the librarian, ran across Gamba at the first

street-corner; and they had not proceeded a dozen yards together when

the eye of the Duke's kinsman fell on a snatch of doggerel scrawled in

chalk on an adjacent wall.

"Beware (the quatrain ran) O virtuous wife or maid,

Our ruler's fondness for the shade,

Lest first he woo thee to the leafy glade

And then into the deeper wood persuade."

This crude play on the Belverde's former title and the one she had

recently acquired was signed "Carlo Gamba."

Odo glanced curiously at the hunchback, who met the look with a composed

smile. "My enemies don't do me justice," said he; "I could do better

than that if I tried;" and he effaced the words with a sweep of his

shabby sleeve.

Other lampoons of the same quality were continually cropping up on the

walls of Pianura, and the ducal police were kept as busy rubbing them

out as a band of weeders digging docks out of a garden. The Duchess's

debts, the Duke's devotions, the Belverde's extortions, Heiligenstern's

mummery, and the political rivalry between Trescorre and the Dominican,

were sauce to the citizen's daily bread; but there was nothing in these

popular satires to suggest the hunchback's trenchant irony.

It was in the Bishop's palace that Odo read the first lampoon in which

he recognised his friend's touch. In this society of polished dilettanti

such documents were valued rather for their literary merits than for

their political significance; and the pungent lines in which the Duke's

panaceas were hit off (the Belverde figuring among them as a Lenten

diet, a dinner of herbs, and a wonder-working bone) caused a flutter of

professional envy in the episcopal circle.

The Bishop received company every evening; and Odo soon found that, as

Gamba had said, it was the best company in Pianura. His lordship lived

in great state in the Gothic palace adjoining the Cathedral. The gloomy

vaulted rooms of the original structure had been abandoned to the small

fry of the episcopal retinue. In the chambers around the courtyard his

lordship drove a thriving trade in wines from his vineyards, while his

clients awaited his pleasure in the armoury, where the panoplies of his

fighting predecessors still rusted on the walls. Behind this facade a

later prelate had built a vast wing overlooking a garden which descended

by easy terraces to the Piana. In the high-studded apartments of this

wing the Bishop held his court and lived the life of a wealthy secular

nobleman. His days were agreeably divided between hunting, inspecting

his estates, receiving the visits of antiquarians, artists and literati,

and superintending the embellishments of his gardens, then the most

famous in North Italy; while his evenings were given to the more private

diversions which his age and looks still justified. In religious

ceremonies or in formal intercourse with his clergy he was the most

imposing and sacerdotal of bishops; but in private life none knew better

how to disguise his cloth. He was moreover a man of parts, and from the

construction of a Latin hexameter to the growing of a Holland bulb, had

a word worth hearing on all subjects likely to engage the dilettante. A

liking soon sprang up between Odo and this versatile prelate; and in the

retirement of his lordship's cabinet, or pacing with him the

garden-alleys set with ancient marbles, the young man gathered many

precepts of that philosophy of pleasure which the great churchmen of the

eighteenth century practised with such rare completeness.

The Bishop had not, indeed, given much thought to the problems which

most deeply engaged his companion. His theory of life took no account of

the future and concerned itself little with social conditions outside

his own class; but he was acquainted with the classical schools of

thought, and, having once acted as the late Duke's envoy to the French

court, had frequented the Baron d'Holbach's drawing-room and

familiarised himself with the views of the Encyclopaedists; though it

was clear that he valued their teachings chiefly as an argument against

asceticism.

"Life," said he to Odo, as they sat one afternoon in a garden-pavilion

above the river, a marble Mercury confronting them at the end of a vista

of clipped myrtle, "life, cavaliere, is a stock on which we may graft

what fruit or flower we choose. See the orange-tree in that Capo di

Monte jar: in a week or two it will be covered with red roses. Here

again is a citron set with carnations; and but yesterday my gardener

sent me word that he had at last succeeded in flowering a pomegranate

with jasmine. In such cases the gardener chooses as his graft the flower

which, by its colour and fragrance, shall most agreeably contrast with

the original stock; and he who orders his life on the same principle,

grafting it with pleasures that form a refreshing off-set to the

obligations of his rank and calling, may regard himself as justified by

Nature, who, as you see, smiles on such abnormal unions among her

children.--Not long ago," he went on, with a reminiscent smile, "I had

here under my roof a young person who practised to perfection this art

of engrafting life with the unexpected. Though she was only a player in

a strolling company--a sweetheart of my wild nephew's, as you may

guess--I have met few of her sex whose conversation was so instructive

or who so completely justified the Scriptural adage, "the sweetness of

the lips increaseth learning..." He broke off to sip his chocolate. "But

why," he continued, "do I talk thus to a young man whose path is lined

with such opportunities? The secret of happiness is to say with the

great Emperor, 'Everything is fruit to me which thy seasons bring, O

Nature.'"

"Such a creed, monsignore," Odo ventured to return, "is as flattering to

the intelligence as to the senses; for surely it better becomes a

reasoning being to face fate as an equal than to cower before it like a

slave; but, since you have opened yourself so freely on the subject, may

I carry your argument a point farther and ask how you reconcile your

conception of man's destiny with the authorised teachings of the

Church?"

The Bishop raised his head with a guarded glance.

"Cavaliere," said he, "the ancients did not admit the rabble to their

sacred mysteries; nor dare we permit the unlettered to enter the

hollowed precincts of the temple of Reason."

"True," Odo acquiesced; "but if the teachings of Christianity are the

best safeguard of the people, should not those teachings at least be

stripped of the grotesque excrescences with which the superstitions of

the people and--perhaps--the greed and craft of the priesthood have

smothered the simple precepts of Jesus?"

The Bishop shrugged his shoulders. "As long," said he, "as the people

need the restraint of a dogmatic religion so long must we do our utmost

to maintain its outward forms. In our market-place on feast-days there

appears the strange figure of a man who carries a banner painted with an

image of Saint Paul surrounded by a mass of writhing serpents. This man

calls himself a descendant of the apostle and sells to our peasants the

miraculous powder with which he killed the great serpent at Malta. If it

were not for the banner, the legend, the descent from Saint Paul, how

much efficacy do you think those powders would have? And how long do you

think the precepts of an invisible divinity would restrain the evil

passions of an ignorant peasant? It is because he is afraid of the

plaster God in his parish church, and of the priest who represents that

God, that he still pays his tithes and forfeitures and keeps his hands

from our throats. By Diana," cried the Bishop, taking snuff, "I have no

patience with those of my calling who go about whining for apostolic

simplicity, and would rob the churches of their ornaments and the

faithful of their ceremonies.

"For my part," he added, glancing with a smile about the

delicately-stuccoed walls of the pavilion, through the windows of which

climbing roses shed their petals on the rich mosaics transferred from a

Roman bath, "for my part, when I remember that 'tis to Jesus of Nazareth

I owe the good roof over my head and the good nags in my stable; nay,

the very venison and pheasants from my preserves, with the gold plate I

eat them off, and above all the leisure to enjoy as they deserve these

excellent gifts of the Creator--when I consider this, I say, I stand

amazed at those who would rob so beneficent a deity of the least of his

privileges.--But why," he continued again after a moment, as Odo

remained silent, "should we vex ourselves with such questions, when

Providence has given us so fair a world to enjoy and such varied

faculties with which to apprehend its beauties? I think you have not

seen the Venus Callipyge in bronze that I have lately received from

Rome?" And he rose and led the way to the house.

This conversation revealed to Odo a third conception of the religious

idea. In Piedmont religion imposed itself as a military discipline, the

enforced duty of the Christian citizen to the heavenly state; to the

Duke it was a means of purchasing spiritual immunity from the

consequences of bodily weakness; to the Bishop, it replaced the panem et

circenses of ancient Rome. Where, in all this, was the share of those

whom Christ had come to save? Where was Saint Francis's devotion to his

heavenly bride, the Lady Poverty? Though here and there a good parish

priest like Crescenti ministered to the temporal wants of the peasantry,

it was only the free-thinker and the atheist who, at the risk of life

and fortune, laboured for their moral liberation. Odo listened with a

saddened heart, thinking, as he followed his host through the perfumed

shade of the gardens, and down the long saloon at the end of which the

Venus stood, of those who for the love of man had denied themselves such

delicate emotions and gone forth cheerfully to exile or imprisonment.

These were the true lovers of the Lady Poverty, the band in which he

longed to be enrolled; yet how restrain a thrill of delight as the

slender dusky goddess detached herself against the cool marble of her

niche, looking, in the sun-rippled green penumbra of the saloon, with a

sound of water falling somewhere out of sight, as though she had just

stepped dripping from the wave?

In the Duchess's company life struck another gait. Here was no waiting

on subtle pleasures, but a headlong gallop after the cruder sort.

Hunting, gaming and masquerading filled her Highness's days; and Odo had

felt small inclination to keep pace with the cavalcade, but for the

flying huntress at its head. To the Duchess's "view halloo" every drop

of blood in him responded; but a vigilant image kept his bosom barred.

So they rode, danced, diced together, but like strangers who cross hands

at a veglione. Once or twice he fancied the Duchess was for unmasking;

but her impulses came and went like fireflies in the dusk, and it suited

his humour to remain a looker-on.

So life piped to him during his first days at Pianura: a merry tune in

the Bishop's company, a mad one in the Duchess's; but always with the

same sad undertone, like the cry of the wind on a warm threshold.

2.14.

Trescorre too kept open house, and here Odo found a warmer welcome than

he had expected. Though Trescorre was still the Duchess's accredited

lover, it was clear that the tie between them was no longer such as to

make him resent her kindness to her young kinsman. He seemed indeed

anxious to draw Odo into her Highness's circle, and surprised him by a

frankness and affability of which his demeanour at Turin had given no

promise. As leader of the anti-clericals he stood for such liberalism as

dared show its head in Pianura; and he seemed disposed to invite Odo's

confidence in political matters. The latter was, however, too much the

child of his race not to hang back from such an invitation. He did not

distrust Trescorre more than the other courtiers; but it was a time when

every ear was alert for the foot-fall of treachery, and the rashest man

did not care to taste first of any cup that was offered him.

These scruples Trescorre made it his business to dispel. He was the only

person at court who was willing to discuss politics, and his clear view

of affairs excited Odo's admiration if not his concurrence. Odo's was in

fact one of those dual visions which instinctively see both sides of a

case and take the defence of the less popular. Gamba's principles were

dear to him; but he did not therefore believe in the personal baseness

of every opponent of the cause. He had refrained from mentioning the

hunchback to his supposed brother; but the latter, in one of their

talks, brought forward Gamba's name, without reference to the

relationship, but with high praise for the young librarian's parts.

This, at the moment, put Odo on his guard; but Trescorre having one day

begged him to give Gamba warning of some petty danger that threatened

him from the clerical side, it became difficult not to believe in an

interest so attested; the more so as Trescorre let it be seen that

Gamba's political views were not such as to distract from his sympathy.

"The fellow's brains," said he, "would be of infinite use to me; but

perhaps he serves us best at a distance. All I ask is that he shall not

risk himself too near Father Ignazio's talons, for he would be a pretty

morsel to throw to the Holy Office, and the weak point of such a man's

position is that, however dangerous in life, he can threaten no one from

the grave."

Odo reported this to Gamba, who heard with a two-edged smile. "Yes," was

his comment, "he fears me enough to want to see me safe in his fold."

Odo flushed at the implication. "And why not?" said he. "Could you not

serve the cause better by attaching yourself openly to the liberals than

by lurking in the ditch to throw mud at both parties?"

"The liberals!" sneered Gamba. "Where are they? And what have they done?

It was they who drove out the Jesuits; but to whom did the Society's

lands go? To the Duke, every acre of them! And the peasantry suffered

far less under the fathers, who were good agriculturists, than under the

Duke, who is too busy with monks and astrologers to give his mind to

irrigation or the reclaiming of waste land. As to the University, who

replaced the Jesuits there? Professors from Padua or Pavia? Heaven

forbid! But holy Barnabites that have scarce Latin enough to spell out

the Lives of the Saints! The Jesuits at least gave a good education to

the upper classes; but now the young noblemen are as ignorant as

peasants."

Trescorre received at his house, besides the court functionaries, all

the liberal faction and the Duchess's personal friends. He kept a lavish

state, but lacking the Bishop's social gifts, was less successful in

fusing the different elements of his circle. The Duke, for the first few

weeks after his kinsman's arrival, received no company; and did not even

appear in the Belverde's drawing-rooms; but Odo deemed it none the less

politic to show himself there without delay.

The new Marchioness of Boscofolto lived in one of the finest palaces of

Pianura, but prodigality was the least of her failings, and the

meagreness of her hospitality was an unfailing source of epigram to the

drawing-rooms of the opposition. True, she kept open table for half the

clergy in the town (omitting, of course, those worldly ecclesiastics who

frequented the episcopal palace), but it was whispered that she had

persuaded her cook to take half wages in return for the privilege of

victualling such holy men, and that the same argument enabled her to

obtain her provisions below the market price. In her outer ante-chamber

the servants yawned dismally over a cold brazier, without so much as a

game of cards to divert them, and the long enfilade of saloons leading

to her drawing-room was so scantily lit that her guests could scarce

recognise each other in passing. In the room where she sat, a tall

crucifix of ebony and gold stood at her elbow and a holy-water cup

encrusted with jewels hung on the wall at her side. A dozen or more

ecclesiastics were always gathered in stiff seats about the hearth; and

the aspect of the apartment, and the Marchioness's semi-monastic

costume, justified the nickname of "the sacristy," which the Duchess had

bestowed on her rival's drawing-room.

Around the small fire on this cheerless hearth the fortunes of the state

were discussed and directed, benefices disposed of, court appointments

debated, and reputations made and unmade in tones that suggested the low

drone of a group of canons intoning the psalter in an empty cathedral.

The Marchioness, who appeared as eager as the others to win Odo to her

party, received him with every mark of consideration and pressed him to

accompany her on a visit to her brother, the Abbot of the Barnabites; an

invitation which he accepted with the more readiness as he had not

forgotten the part played by that religious in the adventure of

Mirandolina of Chioggia.

He found the Abbot a man with a bland intriguing eye and centuries of

pious leisure in his voice. He received his visitors in a room hung with

smoky pictures of the Spanish school, showing Saint Jerome in the

wilderness, the death of Saint Peter Martyr, and other sanguinary

passages in the lives of the saints; and Odo, seated among such

surroundings, and hearing the Abbot deplore the loose lives and

religious negligence of certain members of the court, could scarce

repress a smile as the thought of Mirandolina flitted through his mind.

"She must," he reflected, "have found this a sad change from the

Bishop's palace;" and admired with what philosophy she had passed from

one protector to the other.

Life in Pianura, after the first few weeks, seemed on the whole a tame

business to a youth of his appetite; and he secretly longed for a

pretext to resume his travels. None, however, seemed likely to offer;

for it was clear that the Duke, in the interval of more pressing

concerns, wished to study and observe his kinsman. When sufficiently

recovered from the effects of the pilgrimage, he sent for Odo and

questioned him closely as to the way in which he had spent his time

since coming to Pianura, the acquaintances he had formed and the

churches he had frequented. Odo prudently dwelt on the lofty tone of the

Belverde's circle, and on the privilege he had enjoyed in attending her

on a visit to the holy Abbot of the Barnabites; touching more lightly on

his connection with the Bishop, and omitting all mention of Gamba and

Crescenti. The Duke assumed a listening air, but it was clear that he

could not put off his private thoughts long enough to give an open mind

to other matters; and Odo felt that he was nowhere so secure as in his

cousin's company. He remembered, however, that the Duke had plenty of

eyes to replace his own, and that a secret which was safe in his actual

presence might be in mortal danger on his threshold.

His Highness on this occasion was pleased to inform his kinsman that he

had ordered Count Trescorre to place at the young man's disposal an

income enabling him to keep a carriage and pair, four saddle-horses and

five servants. It was scant measure for an heir-presumptive, and Odo

wondered if the Belverde had had a hand in the apportionment; but his

indifference to such matters (for though personally fastidious he cared

little for display) enabled him to show such gratitude that the Duke,

fancying he might have been content with less, had nearly withdrawn two

of the saddle-horses. This becoming behaviour greatly advanced the young

man in the esteem of his Highness, who accorded him on the spot the

petites entrees of the ducal apartments. It was a privilege Odo had no

mind to abuse; for if life moved slowly in the Belverde's circle it was

at a standstill in the Duke's. His Highness never went abroad but to

serve mass in some church (his almost daily practice) or to visit one of

the numerous monasteries within the city. From Ash Wednesday to Easter

Monday it was his custom to transact no public or private business.

During this time he received none of his ministers, and saw his son but

for a few moments once a day; while in Holy Week he made a retreat with

the Barnabites, the Belverde withdrawing for the same period to the

convent of the Perpetual Adoration.

Odo, as his new life took shape, found his chief interest in the society

of Crescenti and Gamba. In the Duchess's company he might have lost all

taste for soberer pleasures, but that his political sympathies wore a

girl's reproachful shape. Ever at his side, more vividly than in the

body, Fulvia Vivaldi became the symbol of his best aims and deepest

failure. Sometimes, indeed, her look drove him forth in the Duchess's

train, but more often, drawing him from the crowd of pleasure-seekers,

beckoned the way to solitude and study. Under Crescenti's tuition he

began the reading of Dante, who just then, after generations of neglect,

was once more lifting his voice above the crowd of minor singers. The

mighty verse swept Odo out to open seas of thought, and from his vision

of that earlier Italy, hapless, bleeding, but alive and breast to breast

with the foe, he drew the presage of his country's resurrection.

Passing from this high music to the company of Gamba and his friends was

like leaving a church where the penitential psalms are being sung for

the market-place where mud and eggs are flying. The change was not

agreeable to a fastidious taste; but, as Gamba said, you cannot clean

out a stable by waving incense over it. After some hesitation, he had

agreed to make Odo acquainted with those who, like himself, were

secretly working in the cause of progress. These were mostly of the

middle class, physicians, lawyers, and such men of letters as could

subsist on the scant wants of an unliterary town. Ablest among them was

the bookseller, Andreoni, whose shop was the meeting place of all the

literati of Pianura. Andreoni, famous throughout Italy for his editions

of the classics, was a man of liberal views and considerable learning,

and in his private room were to be found many prohibited volumes, such

as Beccaria's Crime and Punishment, Gravina's Hydra Mystica, Concini's

History of Probabilism and the Amsterdam editions of the French

philosophical works.

The reformers met at various places, and their meetings were conducted

with as much secrecy as those of the Honey-Bees. Odo was at first

surprised that they should admit him to their conferences; but he soon

divined that the gatherings he attended were not those at which the

private designs of the party were discussed. It was plain that they

belonged to some kind of secret association; and before he had been long

in Pianura he learned that the society of the Illuminati, that bugbear

of priests and princes, was supposed to have agents at work in the

duchy. Odo had heard little of this execrated league, but that it was

said to preach atheism, tyrannicide and the complete abolition of

territorial rights; but this, being the report of the enemy, was to be

received with a measure of doubt. He tried to learn from Gamba whether

the Illuminati had a lodge in the city; but on this point he could

extract no information. Meanwhile he listened with interest to

discussions on taxation, irrigation, and such economic problems as might

safely be aired in his presence.

These talks brought vividly before him the political corruption of the

state and the misery of the unprivileged classes. All the land in the

duchy was farmed on the metayer system, and with such ill results that

the peasants were always in debt to their landlords. The weight of the

evil lay chiefly on the country-people, who had to pay on every pig they

killed, on all the produce they carried to market, on their farm

implements, their mulberry-orchards and their silk-worms, to say nothing

of the tithes to the parish. So oppressive were these obligations that

many of the peasants, forsaking their farms, enrolled themselves in the

mendicant orders, thus actually strengthening the hand of their

oppressors. Of legislative redress there was no hope, and the Duke was

inaccessible to all but his favourites. The previous year, as Odo

learned, eight hundred poor labourers, exasperated by want, had

petitioned his Highness to relieve them of the corvee; but though they

had raised fifteen hundred scudi to bribe the court official who was to

present their address, no reply had ever been received. In the city

itself, the monopoly of corn and tobacco weighed heavily on the

merchants, and the strict censorship of the press made the open

ventilation of wrongs impossible, while the Duke's sbirri and the agents

of the Holy Office could drag a man's thoughts from his bosom and search

his midnight dreams. The Church party, in the interest of their order,

fostered the Duke's fears of sedition and branded every innovator as an

atheist; the Holy Office having even cast grave doubts on the orthodoxy

of a nobleman who had tried to introduce the English system of ploughing

on his estates. It was evident to Odo that the secret hopes of the

reformers centred in him, and the consciousness of their belief was

sweeter than love in his bosom. It diverted him from the follies of his

class, fixed his thoughts at an age when they are apt to range, and thus

slowly shaped and tempered him for high uses.

In this fashion the weeks passed and summer came. It was the Duchess's

habit to escape the August heats by retiring to the dower-house on the

Piana, a league beyond the gates; but the little prince being still

under the care of the German physician, who would not consent to his

removal, her Highness reluctantly lingered in Pianura. With the first

leafing of the oaks Odo's old love for the budding earth awoke, and he

rode out daily in the forest toward Pontesordo. It was but a flat

stretch of shade, lacking the voice of streams and the cold breath of

mountain-gorges: a wood without humours or surprises; but the mere

spring of the turf was delightful as he cantered down the grass alleys

roofed with level boughs, the outer sunlight just gilding the lip of the

long green tunnel.

Sometimes he attended the Duchess, but oftener chose to ride alone,

setting forth early after a night at cards or a late vigil in

Crescenti's study. One of these solitary rides brought him without

premeditation to a low building on the fenny edge of the wood. It was a

small house, added, it appeared, to an ancient brick front adorned with

pilasters, perhaps a fragment of some woodland temple. The door-step was

overgrown with a stealthy green moss and tufted with giant fennel; and a

shutter swinging loose on its hinge gave a glimpse of inner dimness. Odo

guessed at once that this was the hunting lodge where Cerveno had found

his death; and as he stood looking out across the oozy secrets of the

marsh, the fever seemed to hang on his steps. He turned away with a

shiver; but whether it were the sullen aspect of the house, or the close

way in which the wood embraced it, the place suddenly laid a detaining

hand upon him. It was as though he had reached the heart of solitude.

Even the faint woodland noises seemed to recede from that dense circle

of shade, and the marsh turned a dead eye to heaven.

Odo tethered his horse to a bough and seated himself on the doorstep;

but presently his musings were disturbed by the sound of voices, and the

Duchess, attended by her gentlemen, swept by at the end of a long glade.

He fancied she waved her hand to him; but being in no humour to join the

cavalcade, he remained seated, and the riders soon passed out of sight.

As he sat there sombre thoughts came to him, stealing up like

exhalations from the fen. He saw his life stretched out before him, full

of broken purposes and ineffectual effort. Public affairs were in so

perplexed a case that consistent action seemed impossible to either

party, and their chief efforts were bent toward directing the choice of

a regent. It was this, rather than the possibility of his accession,

which fixed the general attention on Odo, and pledged him to

circumspection. While not concealing that in economic questions his

sympathies were with the liberals, he had carefully abstained from

political action, and had hoped, by the strict observance of his

religious duties, to avoid the enmity of the Church party. Trescorre's

undisguised sympathy seemed the pledge of liberal support, and it could

hardly be doubted that the choice of a regent in the Church party would

be unpopular enough to imperil the dynasty. With Austria hovering on the

horizon the Church herself was not likely to take such risks; and thus

all interests seemed to centre in Odo's appointment.

New elements of uncertainty were, however, perpetually disturbing the

prospect. Among these was Heiligenstern's growing influence over the

Duke. Odo had seen little of the German physician since their first

meeting. Hearsay had it that he was close-pressed by the spies of the

Holy Office, and perhaps for this reason he remained withdrawn in the

Duke's private apartments and rarely showed himself abroad. The little

prince, his patient, was as seldom seen, and the accounts of the

German's treatment were as conflicting as the other rumours of the

court. It was noised on all sides, however, that the Duke was

ill-satisfied with the results of the pilgrimage, and resolved upon less

hallowed measures to assure his heir's recovery. Hitherto, it was

believed, the German had conformed to the ordinary medical treatment;

but the clergy now diligently spread among the people the report that

supernatural agencies were to be employed. This rumour caused such

general agitation that it was said both parties had made secret advances

to the Duchess in the hope of inducing her to stay the scandal. Though

Maria Clementina felt little real concern for the public welfare, her

stirring temper had more than once roused her to active opposition of

the government, and her kinship with the old Duke of Monte Alloro made

her a strong factor in the political game. Of late, however, she seemed

to have wearied of this sport, throwing herself entirely into the

private diversions of her station, and alluding with laughing

indifference to her husband's necromantic researches.

Such was the conflicting gossip of the hour; but it was in fact idle to

forecast the fortunes of a state dependent on a valetudinary's whims;

and rumour was driven to feed upon her own conjectures. To Odo the state

of affairs seemed a satire on his secret aspirations. In a private

station or as a ruling prince he might have served his fellows: as a

princeling on the edge of power he was no more than the cardboard sword

in a toy armoury.

Suddenly he heard his name pronounced and starting up saw Maria

Clementina at his side. She rode alone, and held out her hand as he

approached.

"I have had an accident," said she, breathing quickly. "My girth is

broke and I have lost the rest of my company."

She was glowing with her quick ride, and as Odo lifted her from the

saddle her loosened hair brushed his face like a kiss. For a moment she

seemed like life's answer to the dreary riddle of his fate.

"Ah," she sighed, leaning on him, "I am glad I found you, cousin; I

hardly knew how weary I was;" and she dropped languidly to the doorstep.

Odo's heart was beating hard. He knew it was only the stir of the spring

sap in his veins, but Maria Clementina wore a look of morning brightness

that might have made a soberer judgment blink. He turned away to examine

her saddle. As he did so, he observed that her girth was not torn, but

clean cut, as with sharp scissors. He glanced up in surprise, but she

sat with drooping lids, her head thrown back against the lintel; and

repressing the question on his lips he busied himself with the

adjustment of the saddle. When it was in place he turned to give her a

hand; but she only smiled up at him through her lashes.

"What!" said she with an air of lovely lassitude, "are you so impatient

to be rid of me? I should have been so glad to linger here a little."

She put her hand in his and let him lift her to her feet. "How cool and

still it is! Look at that little spring bubbling through the moss. Could

you not fetch me a drink from it?"

She tossed aside her riding-hat and pushed back the hair from her warm

forehead.

"Your Highness must not drink of the water here," said Odo, releasing

her hand.

She gave him a quick derisive glance. "Ah, true," she cried; "this is

the house to which that abandoned wretch used to lure poor Cerveno." She

drew back to look at the lodge. "Were you ever in it?" she asked

curiously. "I should like to see how the place looks."

She laid her hand on the door-latch, and to Odo's surprise it yielded to

her touch. "We're in luck, I vow," she declared with a laugh. "Come

cousin, let us visit the temple of romance together."

The allusion to Cerveno jarred on Odo, and he followed her in silence.

Within doors, the lodge was seen to consist of a single room, gaily

painted with hunting-scenes framed in garlands of stucco. In the dusk

they could just discern the outlines of carved and gilded furniture, and

a Venice mirror gave back their faces like phantoms in a magic crystal.

"This is stifling," said Odo impatiently. "Would your Highness not be

better in the open?"

"No, no," she persisted. "Unbar the shutters and we shall have air

enough. I love a deserted house: I have always fancied that if one came

in noiselessly enough one might catch the ghosts of the people who used

to live in it."

He obeyed in silence, and the green-filtered forest noon filled the room

with a quiver of light. A chill stole upon Odo as he looked at the

dust-shrouded furniture, the painted harpsichord with green mould

creeping over its keyboard, the consoles set with empty wine flagons and

goblets of Venice glass. The place was like the abandoned corpse of

pleasure.

But Maria Clementina laughed and clapped her hands. "This is

enchanting," she cried, throwing herself into an arm-chair of threadbare

damask, "and I shall rest here while you refresh me with a glass of

Lacrima Christi from one of those dusty flagons. They are empty, you

say? Never mind, for I have a flask of cordial in my saddle-bag. Fetch

it, cousin, and wash these two glasses in the spring, that we may toast

all the dead lovers that have drunk out of them."

When Odo returned with the flask and glasses, she had brushed the dust

from a slender table of inlaid wood, and drawn a seat near her own. She

filled the two goblets with cordial and signed to Odo to seat himself

beside her.

"Why do you pull such a glum face?" she cried, leaning over to touch his

glass before she emptied hers. "Is it that you are thinking of poor

Cerveno? On my soul, I question if he needs your pity! He had his hour

of folly, and was too gallant a gentleman not to pay the shot. For my

part I would rather drink a poisoned draught than die of thirst."

The wine was rising in waves of colour over her throat and brow, and

setting her glass down she suddenly laid her ungloved hand on Odo's.

"Cousin," she said in a low voice, "I could help you if you would let

me."

"Help me?" he said, only half-aware of her words in the warm surprise of

her touch.

She drew back, but with a look that seemed to leave her hand in his.

"Are you mad," she murmured, "or do you despise your danger?"

"Am I in danger?" he echoed smiling. He was thinking how easily a man

might go under in that deep blue gaze of hers. She dropped her lids as

though aware of his thought.

"Why do you concern yourself with politics?" she went on with a new note

in her voice. "Can you find no diversion more suited to your rank and

age? Our court is a dull one, I own--but surely even here a man might

find a better use for his time."

Odo's self-possession returned in a flash. "I am not," cried he gaily,

"in a position to dispute it at this moment;" and he leaned over to

recapture her hand. To his surprise she freed herself with an affronted

air.

"Ah," she said, "you think this a device to provoke a gallant

conversation." She faced him nobly now. "Look," said she, drawing a

folded paper from the breast of her riding-coat. "Have you not

frequented these houses?"

Suddenly sobered, he ran his eye over the paper. It contained the dates

of the meetings he had attended at the houses of Gamba's friends, with

the designation of each house. He turned pale.

"I had no notion," said he, with a smile, "that my movements were of

interest in such high places; but why does your Highness speak of danger

in this connection?"

"Because it is rumoured that the lodge of the Illuminati, which is known

to exist in Pianura, meets secretly at the houses on this list."

Odo hesitated a moment. "Of that," said he, "I have no report. I am

acquainted with the houses only as the residences of certain learned and

reputable men, who devote their leisure to scientific studies."

"Oh," she interrupted, "call them by what name you please! It is all one

to your enemies."

"My enemies?" said he lightly. "And who are they?"

"Who are they?" she repeated impatiently. "Who are they not? Who is

there at court that has such cause to love you? The Holy Office? The

Duke's party?"

Odo smiled. "I am perhaps not in the best odour with the Church party,"

said he, "but Count Trescorre has shown himself my friend, and I think

my character is safe in his keeping. Nor will it be any news to him that

I frequent the company you name."

She threw back her head with a laugh. "Boy," she cried, "you are blinder

even than I fancied! Do you know why it was that the Duke summoned you

to Pianura? Because he wished his party to mould you to their shape, in

case the regency should fall into your hands. And what has Trescorre

done? Shown himself your friend, as you say--won your confidence,

encouraged you to air your liberal views, allowed you to show yourself

continually in the Bishop's company, and to frequent the secret

assemblies of free thinkers and conspirators--and all that the Duke may

turn against you and perhaps name him regent in your stead! Believe me,

cousin," she cried with a mounting urgency, "you never stood in greater

need of a friend than now. If you continue on your present course you

are undone. The Church party is resolved to hunt down the Illuminati,

and both sides would rejoice to see you made the scapegoat of the Holy

Office." She sprung up and laid her hand on his arm. "What can I do to

convince you?" she said passionately. "Will you believe me if I ask you

to go away--to leave Pianura on the instant?"

Odo had risen also, and they faced each other in silence. There was an

unmistakable meaning in her tone: a self-revelation so simple and

ennobling that she seemed to give herself as hostage for her words.

"Ask me to stay, cousin--not to go," he whispered, her yielding hand in

his.

"Ah, madman," she cried, "not to believe me NOW! But it is not too late

if you will still be guided."

"I will be guided--but not away from you."

She broke away, but with a glance that drew him after. "It is late now

and we must set forward," she said abruptly. "Come to me tomorrow early.

I have much more to say to you."

The words seemed to be driven out on her quick breathing, and the blood

came and went in her cheek like a hurried messenger. She caught up her

riding-hat and turned to put it on before the Venice mirror.

Odo, stepping up behind her, looked over her shoulder to catch the

reflection of her blush. Their eyes met for a laughing instant; then he

drew back deadly pale, for in the depths of the dim mirror he had seen

another face.

The Duchess cried out and glanced behind her. "Who was it? Did you see

her?" she said trembling.

Odo mastered himself instantly.

"I saw nothing," he returned quietly. "What can your Highness mean?"

She covered her eyes with her hands. "A girl's face," she

shuddered--"there in the mirror--behind mine--a pale face with a black

travelling hood over it--"

He gathered up her gloves and riding-whip and threw open the door of the

pavilion.

"Your Highness is weary and the air here insalubrious. Shall we not

ride?" he said.

Maria Clementina heard him with a blank stare. Suddenly she roused

herself and made as though to pass out; but on the threshold she

snatched her whip from him and, turning, flung it full at the mirror.

Her aim was good and the chiselled handle of the whip shattered the

glass to fragments.

She caught up her long skirt and stepped into the open.

"I brook no rivals!" said she with a white-lipped smile. "And now,

cousin," she added gaily, "to horse!"

2.15.

Odo, as in duty bound, waited the next morning on the Duchess; but word

was brought that her Highness was indisposed, and could not receive him

till evening.

He passed a drifting and distracted day. The fear lay much upon him that

danger threatened Gamba and his associates; yet to seek them out in the

present conjuncture might be to play the stalking-horse to their

enemies. Moreover, he fancied the Duchess not incapable of using

political rumours to further her private caprice; and scenting no

immediate danger he resolved to wait upon events.

On rising from dinner he was surprised by a summons from the Duke. The

message, an unusual one at that hour, was brought by a slender pale lad,

not in his Highness's service, but in that of the German physician

Heiligenstern. The boy, who was said to be a Georgian rescued from the

Grand Signior's galleys, and whose small oval face was as smooth as a

girl's, accosted Odo in one of the remoter garden alleys with the

request to follow him at once to the Duke's apartment. Odo complied, and

his guide loitered ahead with an air of unconcern, as though not wishing

to have his errand guessed. As they passed through the tapestry gallery

preceding the gentlemen's antechamber, footsteps and voices were heard

within. Instantly the boy was by Odo's side and had drawn him into the

embrasure of a window. A moment later Trescorre left the antechamber and

walked rapidly past their hiding-place. As soon as he was out of sight

the Georgian led Odo from his concealment and introduced him by a

private way to the Duke's closet.

His Highness was in his bed-chamber; and Odo, on being admitted, found

him, still in dressing-gown and night-cap, kneeling with a disordered

countenance before the ancient picture of the Last Judgment that hung on

the wall facing his bed. He seemed to have forgotten that he had asked

for his kinsman; for on the latter's entrance he started up with a

suspicious glance and hastily closed the panels of the picture, which

(as Odo now noticed) appeared to conceal an inner painting. Then,

gathering his dressing-gown about him, he led the way to his closet and

bade his visitor be seated.

"I have," said he, speaking in a low voice, and glancing apprehensively

about him, "summoned you hither privately to speak on a subject which

concerns none but ourselves.--You met no one on your way?" he broke off

to enquire.

Odo told him that Count Trescorre had passed, but without perceiving

him.

The Duke seemed relieved. "My private actions," said he querulously,

"are too jealously spied upon by my ministers. Such surveillance is an

offence to my authority, and my subjects shall learn that it will not

frighten me from my course." He straightened his bent shoulders and

tried to put on the majestic look of his official effigy. "It appears,"

he continued, with one of his sudden changes of manner, "that the

Duchess's uncle, the Duke of Monte Alloro, has heard favourable reports

of your wit and accomplishments, and is desirous of receiving you at his

court." He paused, and Odo concealed his surprise behind a profound bow.

"I own," the Duke went on, "that the invitation comes unseasonably,

since I should have preferred to keep you at my side; but his Highness's

great age, and his close kinship to my wife, through whom the request is

conveyed, make it impossible for me to refuse." The Duke again paused,

as though uncertain how to proceed. At length he resumed:--"I will not

conceal from you that his Highness is subject to the fantastical humours

of his age. He makes it a condition that the length of your stay shall

not be limited; but should you fail to suit his mood you may find

yourself out of favour in a week. He writes of wishing to send you on a

private mission to the court of Naples; but this may be no more than a

passing whim. I see no way, however, but to let you go, and to hope for

a favourable welcome for you. The Duchess is determined upon giving her

uncle this pleasure, and in fact has consented in return to oblige me in

an important matter." He flushed and averted his eyes. "I name this," he

added with an effort, "only that her Highness may be aware that it

depends on herself whether I hold to my side of the bargain. Your papers

are already prepared and you have my permission to set out at your

convenience. Meanwhile it were well that you should keep your

preparations private, at least till you are ready to take leave." And

with the air of dignity he could still assume on occasion, he rose and

handed Odo his passport.

Odo left the closet with a beating heart. It was clear that his

departure from Pianura was as strongly opposed by some one in high

authority as it was favoured by the Duchess; and why opposed and by whom

he could not so much as hazard a guess. In the web of court intrigues it

was difficult for the wariest to grope his way; and Odo was still new to

such entanglements. His first sensation was one of release, of a future

suddenly enlarged and cleared. The door was open again to opportunity,

and he was of an age to greet the unexpected like a bride. Only one

thought disturbed him. It was clear that Maria Clementina had paid high

for his security; and did not her sacrifice, whatever its nature,

constitute a claim upon his future? In sending him to her uncle, whose

known favourite she was, she did not let him out of her hand. If he

accepted this chance of escape he must hereafter come and go as she

bade. At the thought, his bounding fancy slunk back humbled. He saw

himself as Trescorre's successor, his sovereign's official lover, taking

up again, under more difficult circumstances, and without the zest of

inexperience, the dull routine of his former bondage. No, a thousand

times no; he would fetter himself to no woman's fancy! Better find a

pretext for staying in Pianura, affront the Duchess by refusing her aid,

risk his prospects, his life even, than bow his neck twice to the same

yoke. All her charm vanished in this vision of unwilling

subjection...Disturbed by these considerations, and anxious to compose

his spirits, Odo bethought himself of taking refuge in the Bishop's

company. Here at least the atmosphere was clear of mystery: the Bishop

held aloof from political intrigue and breathed an air untainted by the

odium theologicum. Odo found his lordship seated in the cool tessellated

saloon which contained his chiefest treasures--marble busts ranged on

pedestals between the windows, the bronze Venus Callipyge, and various

tables of pietra commessa set out with vases and tazzas of antique

pattern. A knot of virtuosi gathered about one of these tables were

engaged in examining a collection of engraved gems displayed by a

lapidary of Florence; while others inspected a Greek manuscript which

the Bishop had lately received from Syria. Beyond the windows, a

cedrario or orange-walk stretched its sunlit vista to the terrace above

the river; and the black cassocks of one or two priests who were

strolling in the clear green shade of a pleached alley made pleasant

spots of dimness in the scene.

Even here, however, Odo was aware of a certain disquietude. The Bishop's

visitors, instead of engaging in animated disputations over his

lordship's treasures, showed a disposition to walk apart, conversing in

low tones; and he himself, presently complaining of the heat, invited

Odo to accompany him to the grot beneath the terrace. In this shaded

retreat, studded with shells and coral and cooled by an artificial wind

forced through the conchs of marble Tritons, his lordship at once began

to speak of the rumours of public disaffection.

"As you know," said he, "my duties and tastes alike seclude me from

political intrigue, and the scandal of the day seldom travels beyond my

kitchens. But as creaking signboards announce a storm, the hints and

whispers of my household tell me there is mischief abroad. My position

protects me from personal risk, and my lack of ambition from political

enmity; for it is notorious I would barter the highest honours in the

state for a Greek vase or a bronze of Herculanaeum--not to mention the

famous Venus of Giorgione, which, if report be true, his Highness has

burned at Father Ignazio's instigation. But yours, cavaliere, is a less

sheltered walk, and perhaps a friendly warning may be of service. Yet,"

he added after a pause, "a warning I can scarce call it, since I know

not from what quarter the danger impends. Proximus ardet Ucalegon; but

there is no telling which way the flames may spread. I can only advise

you that the Duke's growing infatuation for his German magician has bred

the most violent discontent among his subjects, and that both parties

appear resolved to use this disaffection to their advantage. It is said

his Highness intends to subject the little prince to some mysterious

treatment connected with the rites of the Egyptian priesthood, of whose

secret doctrine Heiligenstern pretends to be an adept. Yesterday it was

bruited that the Duchess loudly opposed the experiment; this afternoon

it is given out that she has yielded. What the result may be, none can

foresee; but whichever way the storm blows, the chief danger probably

threatens those who have had any connection with the secret societies

known to exist in the duchy."

Odo listened attentively, but without betraying any great surprise; and

the Bishop, evidently reassured by his composure, suggested that, the

heat of the day having declined, they should visit the new Indian

pheasants in his volary.

The Bishop's hints had not helped his listener to a decision. Odo indeed

gave Cantapresto orders to prepare as privately as possible for their

departure; but rather to appear to be carrying out the Duke's

instructions than with any fixed intention of so doing. How to find a

pretext for remaining he was yet uncertain. To disobey the Duke was

impossible; but in the general state of tension it seemed likely enough

that both his Highness and the Duchess might change their minds within

the next twenty-four hours. He was reluctant to appear that evening in

the Duchess's circle; but the command was not to be evaded, and he went

thither resolved to excuse himself early.

He found her Highness surrounded by the usual rout that attended her.

She was herself in a mood of wild mirth, occasioned by the drolleries of

an automatic female figure which a travelling showman introduced by

Cantapresto had obtained leave to display at court. This lively puppet

performed with surprising skill on the harpsichord, giving the company,

among other novelties, selections from the maestro Piccini's latest

opera and a concerto of the German composer Gluck.

Maria Clementina seemed at first unaware of her kinsman's presence, and

he began to hope he might avoid any private talk with her; but when the

automaton had been dismissed and the card-tables were preparing, one of

her gentlemen summoned him to her side. As usual, she was highly rouged

in the French fashion, and her cold blue eyes had a light which set off

the extraordinary fairness of her skin.

"Cousin," said she at once, "have you your papers?" Her tone was haughty

and yet eager, as though she scorned to show herself concerned, yet

would not have had him believe in her indifference. Odo bowed without

speaking.

"And when do you set out?" she continued. "My good uncle is impatient to

receive you."

"At the earliest moment, madam," he replied with some hesitation.

The hesitation was not lost on her and he saw her flush through her

rouge.

"Ah," said she in a low voice, "the earliest moment is none too

early!--Do you go tomorrow?" she persisted; but just then Trescorre

advanced toward them, and under a burst of assumed merriment she

privately signed to Odo to withdraw.

He was glad to make his escape, for the sense of walking among hidden

pitfalls was growing on him. That he had acquitted himself awkwardly

with the Duchess he was well aware; but Trescorre's interruption had at

least enabled him to gain time. An increasing unwillingness to leave

Pianura had replaced his former impatience to be gone. The reluctance to

desert his friends was coupled with a boyish desire to stay and see the

game out; and behind all his other impulses lurked the instinctive

resistance to any feminine influence save one.

The next morning he half-expected another message from the Duchess; but

none came, and he judged her to be gravely offended. Cantapresto

appeared early with the rumour that some kind of magical ceremony was to

be performed that evening in the palace; and toward noon the Georgian

boy again came privately to Odo and requested him to wait on the Duke

when his Highness rose from supper. This increased Odo's fears for

Gamba, Andreoni and the other reformers; yet he dared neither seek them

out in person nor entrust a message to Cantapresto. As the day passed,

however, he began to throw off his apprehensions. It was not the first

time since he had come to Pianura that there had been ominous talk of

political disturbances, and he knew that Gamba and his friends were not

without means of getting under shelter. As to his own risk, he did not

give it a thought. He was not of an age or a temper to weigh personal

danger against the excitement of conflict; and as evening drew on he

found himself wondering with some impatience if after all nothing

unusual would happen.

He supped alone, and at the appointed hour proceeded to the Duke's

apartments, taking no farther precaution than to carry his passport

about him. The palace seemed deserted. Everywhere an air of apprehension

and mystery hung over the long corridors and dimly-lit antechambers. The

day had been sultry, with a low sky foreboding great heat, and not a

breath of air entered at the windows. There were few persons about, but

one or two beggars lurked as usual on the landings of the great

staircase, and Odo, in passing, felt his sleeve touched by a woman

cowering under the marble ramp in the shadow thrown by a colossal

Caesar. Looking down, he heard a voice beg for alms, and as he gave it

the woman pressed a paper into his hand and slipped away through the

darkness.

Odo hastened on till he could assure himself of being unobserved; then

he unfolded the paper and read these words in Gamba's hand: "Have no

fear for any one's safety but your own." With a sense of relief he hid

the message and entered the Duke's antechamber.

Here he was received by Heiligenstern's Oriental servant, who, with a

mute salutation, led him into a large room where the Duke's pages

usually waited. The walls of this apartment had been concealed under

hangings of black silk worked with cabalistic devices. Oil-lamps set on

tripods of antique design shed a faint light over the company seated at

one end of the room, among whom Odo recognised the chief dignitaries of

the court. The ladies looked pale but curious, the men for the most part

indifferent or disapproving. Intense quietness prevailed, broken only by

the soft opening and closing of the door through which the guests were

admitted. Presently the Duke and Duchess emerged from his Highness's

closet. They were followed by Prince Ferrante, supported by his governor

and his dwarf, and robed in a silken dressing-gown which hung in

voluminous folds about his little shrunken body. Their Highnesses seated

themselves in two armchairs in front of the court, and the little prince

reclined beside his mother.

No sooner had they taken their places than Heiligenstern stepped forth,

wearing a doctor's gown and a quaintly-shaped bonnet or mitre. In his

long robes and strange headdress he looked extraordinarily tall and

pale, and his features had the glassy-eyed fixity of an ancient mask. He

was followed by his two attendants, the Oriental carrying a frame-work

of polished metal, not unlike a low narrow bed, which he set down in the

middle of the room; while the Georgian lad, who had exchanged his

fustanella and embroidered jacket for a flowing white robe, bore in his

hands a crystal globe set in a gold stand. Having reverently placed it

on a small table, the boy, at a signal from his master, drew forth a

phial and dropped its contents into a bronze vat or brazier which stood

at the far end of the room. Instantly clouds of perfumed vapour filled

the air, and as these dispersed it was seen that the black hangings of

the walls had vanished with them, and the spectators found themselves

seated in a kind of open temple through which the eye travelled down

colonnaded vistas set with statues and fountains. This magical prospect

was bathed in sunlight, and Odo observed that, though the lamps had gone

out, the same brightness suffused the room and illuminated the wondering

faces of the audience. The little prince uttered a cry of delight, and

the magician stepped forward, raising a long white wand in his hand.

"This," said he, in measured accents, "is an evocation of the Temple of

Health, into whose blissful precincts the wisdom of the ancients was

able to lead the sufferer who put his trust in them. This deceptio

visus, or product of rhabdomancy, easily effected by an adept of the

Egyptian mysteries, is designed but to prefigure the reality which

awaits those who seek health through the ministry of the disciples of

Iamblichus. It is no longer denied among men of learning that those who

have been instructed in the secret doctrine of the ancients are able, by

certain correspondences of nature, revealed only to the initiated, to

act on the inanimate world about them, and on the animal economy, by

means beyond the common capabilities of man." He paused a moment, and

then, turning with a low bow to the Duke, enquired whether his Highness

desired the rites to proceed.

The Duke signed his assent, and Heiligenstern, raising his wand, evoked

another volume of mist. This time it was shot through with green flames,

and as the wild light subsided the room was once more revealed with its

black hangings, and the lamps flickered into life again.

After another pause, doubtless intended to increase the tension of the

spectators, the magician bade his servant place the crystal before him.

He then raised his hands as if in prayer, speaking in a strange chanting

jargon, in which Odo detected fragments of Greek and Latin, and the

recurring names of the Judaic demons and angels. As this ceased

Heiligenstern beckoned to the Georgian boy, who approached him with

bowed head and reverently folded hands.

"Your Highness," said Heiligenstern, "and this distinguished company,

are doubtless familiar with the magic crystal of the ancients, in which

the future may be deciphered by the pure in heart. This lad, whom I

rescued from slavery and have bred to my service in the solemn rites of

the priesthood of Isis, is as clear in spirit as the crystal which

stands before you. The future lies open to him in this translucent

sphere and he is prepared to disclose it at your bidding."

There was a moment's silence; but on the magician's repeating his

enquiry the Duke said: "Let the boy tell me what he sees."

Heiligenstern at once laid his hands on his acolyte's head and murmured

a few words over him; then the boy advanced and bent devoutly above the

crystal. Almost immediately the globe was seen to cloud, as though

suffused with milk; the cloud gradually faded and the boy began to speak

in a low hesitating tone.

"I see," he said, "I see a face...a fair face..." He faltered and

glanced up almost apprehensively at Heiligenstern, whose gaze remained

impenetrable. The boy began to tremble. "I see nothing," he said in a

whisper. "There is one here purer than I...the crystal will not speak

for me in that other's presence..."

"Who is that other?" Heiligenstern asked.

The boy fixed his eyes on the little prince. An excited murmur ran

through the company and Heiligenstern again advanced to the Duke. "Will

your Highness," he asked, "permit the prince to look into the sacred

sphere?"

Odo saw the Duchess extend her hand impulsively toward the child; but at

a signal from the Duke the little prince's chair was carried to the

table on which the crystal stood. Instantly the former phenomenon was

repeated, the globe clouding and then clearing itself like a pool after

rain.

"Speak, my son," said the Duke. "Tell us what the heavenly powers reveal

to you."

The little prince continued to pore over the globe without speaking.

Suddenly his thin face reddened and he clung more closely to his

companion's arm.

"I see a beautiful place," he began, his small fluting voice rising like

a bird's pipe in the stillness, "a place a thousand times more beautiful

than this...like a garden...full of golden-haired children...with

beautiful strange toys in their hands...they have wings like

birds...they ARE birds...ah! they are flying away from me...I see them

no more...they vanish through the trees..." He broke off sadly.

Heiligenstern smiled. "That, your Highness, is a vision of the prince's

own future, when, restored to health, he is able to disport himself with

his playmates in the gardens of the palace."

"But they were not the gardens of the palace!" the little boy exclaimed.

"They were much more beautiful than our gardens."

Heiligenstern bowed. "They appeared so to your Highness," he

deferentially suggested, "because all the world seems more beautiful to

those who have regained their health."

"Enough, my son!" exclaimed the Duchess with a shaken voice. "Why will

you weary the child?" she continued, turning to the Duke; and the

latter, with evident reluctance, signed to Heiligenstern to cover the

crystal. To the general surprise, however, Prince Ferrante pushed back

the black velvet covering which the Georgian boy was preparing to throw

over it.

"No, no," he exclaimed, in the high obstinate voice of the spoiled

child, "let me look again...let me see some more beautiful things...I

have never seen anything so beautiful, even in my sleep!" It was the

plaintive cry of the child whose happiest hours are those spent in

unconsciousness.

"Look again, then," said the Duke, "and ask the heavenly powers what

more they have to show you."

The boy gazed in silence; then he broke out: "Ah, now we are in the

palace...I see your Highness's cabinet...no, it is the bedchamber...it

is night...and I see your Highness lying asleep...very still...very

still...your Highness wears the scapular received last Easter from his

Holiness...It is very dark...Oh, now a light begins to shine...where

does it come from? Through the door? No, there is no door on that side

of the room...It shines through the wall at the foot of the bed...ah! I

see"--his voice mounted to a cry--"The old picture at the foot of the

bed...the picture with the wicked people burning in it...has opened like

a door...the light is shining through it...and now a lady steps out from

the wall behind the picture...oh, so beautiful...she has yellow hair, as

yellow as my mother's...but longer...oh, much longer...she carries a

rose in her hand...and there are white doves flying about her

shoulders...she is naked, quite naked, poor lady! but she does not seem

to mind...she seems to be laughing about it...and your Highness..."

The Duke started up violently. "Enough--enough!" he stammered. "The

fever is on the child...this agitation is...most pernicious...Cover the

crystal, I say!"

He sank back, his forehead damp with perspiration. In an instant the

crystal had been removed, and Prince Ferrante carried back to his

mother's side. The boy seemed in nowise affected by his father's

commotion. His eyes burned with excitement, and he sat up eagerly, as

though not to miss a detail of what was going forward. Maria Clementina

leaned over and clasped his hand, but he hardly noticed her. "I want to

see some more beautiful things!" he insisted.

The Duke sat speechless, a fallen heap in his chair, and the courtiers

looked at each other, their faces shifting spectrally in the faint

light, like phantom travellers waiting to be ferried across some

mysterious river. At length Heiligenstern advanced and with every mark

of deference addressed himself to the Duke.

"Your Highness," said he quietly, "need be under no apprehension as to

the effect produced upon the prince. The magic crystal, as your Highness

is aware, is under the protection of the blessed spirits, and its

revelations cannot harm those who are pure-minded enough to receive

them. But the chief purpose of this assemblage was to witness the

communication of vital force to the prince, by means of the electrical

current. The crystal, by revealing its secrets to the prince, has

testified to his perfect purity of mind, and thus declared him to be in

a peculiarly fit state to receive what may be designated as the

Sacrament of the new faith."

A murmur ran through the room, but Heiligenstern continued without

wavering: "I mean thereby to describe that natural religion which, by

instructing its adepts in the use of the hidden potencies of earth and

air, testifies afresh to the power of the unseen Maker of the Universe."

The murmur subsided, and the Duke, regaining his voice, said with an

assumption of authority: "Let the treatment begin."

Heiligenstern immediately spoke a word to the Oriental, who bent over

the metal bed which had been set up in the middle of the room. As he did

so the air again darkened and the figures of the magician and his

assistants were discernible only as flitting shades in the obscurity.

Suddenly a soft pure light overflowed the room, the perfume of flowers

filled the air, and music seemed to steal out of the very walls.

Heiligenstern whispered to the governor and between them they lifted the

little prince from his chair and laid him gently on the bed. The

magician then leaned over the boy with a slow weaving motion of the

hands.

"If your Highness will be pleased to sleep," he said, "I promise your

Highness the most beautiful dreams."

The boy smiled back at him and he continued to bend above the bed with

flitting hands. Suddenly the little prince began to laugh.

"What does your Highness feel?" the magician asked.

"A prickling...such a soft warm prickling...as if my blood were sunshine

with motes dancing in it...or as if that sparkling wine of France were

running all over my body."

"It is an agreeable sensation, your Highness?"

The boy nodded.

"It is well with your Highness?"

"Very well."

Heiligenstern began a loud rhythmic chant, and gradually the air

darkened, but with the mild dimness of a summer twilight, through which

sparks could be seen flickering like fire-flies about the reclining

prince. The hush grew deeper; but in the stillness Odo became aware of

some unseen influence that seemed to envelope him in waves of exquisite

sensation. It was as though the vast silence of the night had poured

into the room and, like a dark tepid sea, was lapping about his body and

rising to his lips. His thoughts, dissolved into emotion, seemed to

waver and float on the stillness like sea-weed on the lift of the tide.

He stood spell-bound, lulled, yielding himself to a blissful

dissolution.

Suddenly he became aware that the hush was too intense, too complete;

and a moment later, as though stretched to the cracking-point, it burst

terrifically into sound. A huge uproar shook the room, crashing through

it like a tangible mass. The sparks whirled in a menacing dance round

the little prince's body, and, abruptly blotted, left a deeper darkness,

in which the confused herding movements of startled figures were

indistinguishably merged. A flash of silence followed; then the

liberated forces of the night broke in rain and thunder on the rocking

walls of the room.

"Light--light!" some one stammered; and at the same moment a door was

flung open, admitting a burst of candle-light and a group of figures in

ecclesiastical dress, against which the white gown and black hood of

Father Ignazio detached themselves. The Dominican stepped toward the

Duke.

"Your Highness," said he in a tone of quiet resolution, "must pardon

this interruption; I act at the bidding of the Holy Office."

Even in that moment of profound disarray the name sent a deeper shudder

through his hearers. The Duke, who stood grasping the arms of his chair,

raised his head and tried to stare down the intruders; but no one heeded

his look. At a signal from the Dominican a servant had brought in a pair

of candelabra, and in their commonplace light the cabalistic hangings,

the magician's appliances and his fantastically-dressed attendants

looked as tawdry as the paraphernalia of a village quack. Heiligenstern

alone survived the test. Erect, at bay as it were, his black robe

falling in hieratic folds, the white wand raised in his hands, he might

have personified the Prince of Darkness drawn up undaunted against the

hosts of the Lord. Some one had snatched the little prince from his

stretcher, and Maria Clementina, holding him to her breast, sat palely

confronting the sorcerer. She alone seemed to measure her strength

against his in some mysterious conflict of the will. But meanwhile the

Duke had regained his voice.

"My father," said he, "on what information does the Holy Office act?"

The Dominican drew a parchment from his breast. "On that of the

Inquisitor General, your Highness," he replied, handing the paper to the

Duke, who unfolded it with trembling hands but was plainly unable to

master its contents. Father Ignazio beckoned to an ecclesiastic who had

entered the room in his train.

"This, your Highness," said he, "is the abate de Crucis of Innsbruck,

who was lately commissioned by the Holy Office to enquire into the

practises and doctrine of the order of the Illuminati, that corrupt and

atheistical sect which has been the cause of so much scandal among the

German principalities. In the course of his investigations he became

aware that the order had secretly established a lodge in Pianura; and

hastening hither from Rome to advise your Highness of the fact, has

discovered in the so-called Count Heiligenstern one of the most

notorious apostles of the order." He turned to the priest. "Signor

abate," he said, "you confirm these facts?"

The abate de Crucis quietly advanced. He was a slight pale man of about

thirty, with a thoughtful and indulgent cast of countenance.

"In every particular," said he, bowing profoundly to the Duke, and

speaking in a low voice of singular sweetness. "It has been my duty to

track this man's career from its ignoble beginning to its infamous

culmination, and I have been able to place in the hands of the Holy

Office the most complete proofs of his guilt. The so-called Count

Heiligenstern is the son of a tailor in a small village of Pomerania.

After passing through various vicissitudes with which I need not trouble

your Highness, he obtained the confidence of the notorious Dr.

Weishaupt, the founder of the German order of the Illuminati, and

together this precious couple have indefatigably propagated their

obscene and blasphemous doctrines. That they preach atheism and

tyrannicide I need not tell your Highness; but it is less generally

known that they have made these infamous doctrines the cloak of private

vices from which even paganism would have recoiled. The man now before

me, among other open offences against society, is known to have seduced

a young girl of noble family in Ratisbon and to have murdered her child.

His own wife and children he long since abandoned and disowned; and the

youth yonder, whom he describes as a Georgian slave rescued from the

Grand Signior's galleys, is in fact the wife of a Greek juggler of

Ravenna, and has forsaken her husband to live in criminal intercourse

with an atheist and assassin."

This indictment, pronounced with an absence of emotion which made each

word cut the air like the separate stroke of a lash, was followed by a

prolonged silence; then one of the Duchess's ladies cried out suddenly

and burst into tears. This was the signal for a general outbreak. The

room was filled with a confusion of voices, and among the groups surging

about him Odo noticed a number of the Duke's sbirri making their way

quietly through the crowd. The notary of the Holy Office advanced toward

Heiligenstern, who had placed himself against the wall, with one arm

flung about his trembling acolyte. The Duchess, her boy still clasped

against her, remained proudly seated; but her eyes met Odo's in a glance

of terrified entreaty, and at the same instant he felt a clutch on his

sleeve and heard Cantapresto's whisper.

"Cavaliere, a boat waits at the landing below the tanners' lane. The

shortest way to it is through the gardens and your excellency will find

the gate beyond the Chinese pavilion unlocked."

He had vanished before Odo could look round. The latter still wavered;

but as he did so he caught Trescorre's face through the crowd. The

minister's eye was fixed on him; and the discovery was enough to make

him plunge through the narrow wake left by Cantapresto's retreat.

Odo made his way unhindered to the ante-room, which was also thronged,

ecclesiastics, servants and even beggars from the courtyard jostling

each other in their struggle to see what was going forward. The

confusion favoured his escape, and a moment later he was hastening down

the tapestry gallery and through the vacant corridors of the palace. He

was familiar with half-a-dozen short-cuts across this network of

passages; but in his bewilderment he pressed on down the great stairs

and across the echoing guard-room that opened on the terrace. A drowsy

sentinel challenged him; and on Odo's explaining that he sought to

leave, and not to enter, the palace, replied that he had his Highness's

orders to let no one out that night. For a moment Odo was at a loss;

then he remembered his passport. It seemed to him an interminable time

before the sentinel had scrutinised it by the light of a guttering

candle, and to his surprise he found himself in a cold sweat of fear.

The rattle of the storm simulated footsteps at his heels and he felt the

blind rage of a man within shot of invisible foes.

The passport restored, he plunged out into the night. It was pitch-black

in the gardens and the rain drove down with the guttural rush of a

midsummer storm. So fierce was its fall that it seemed to suck up the

earth in its black eddies, and he felt himself swept along over a

heaving hissing surface, with wet boughs lashing out at him as he fled.

From one terrace to another he dropped to lower depths of buffeting

dripping darkness, till he found his hand on the gate-latch and swung to

the black lane below the wall. Thence on a run he wound to the tanners'

quarter by the river: a district commonly as foul-tongued as it was

ill-favoured, but tonight clean-purged of both evils by the vehement

sweep of the storm. Here he groped his way among slippery places and

past huddled out-buildings to the piles of the wharf. The rain was now

subdued to a noiseless vertical descent, through which he could hear the

tap of the river against the piles. Scarce knowing what he fled or

whither he was flying, he let himself down the steps and found the flat

of a boat's bottom underfoot. A boatman, distinguishable only as a black

bulk in the stern, steadied his descent with outstretched hand; then the

bow swung round, and after a labouring stroke or two they caught the

current and were swept down through the rushing darkness.