BOOK III.

THE CHOICE.

The Vision touched him on the lips and said:

Hereafter thou shalt eat me in thy bread,

Drink me in all thy kisses, feel my hand

Steal 'twixt thy palm and Joy's, and see me stand

Watchful at every crossing of the ways,

The insatiate lover of thy nights and days.

3.1.

It was at Naples, some two years later, that the circumstances of his

flight were recalled to Odo Valsecca by the sound of a voice which at

once mysteriously connected itself with the incidents of that wild

night.

He was seated with a party of gentlemen in the saloon of Sir William

Hamilton's famous villa of Posilipo, where they were sipping the

ambassador's iced sherbet and examining certain engraved gems and

burial-urns recently taken from the excavations. The scene was such as

always appealed to Odo's fancy: the spacious room, luxuriously fitted

with carpets and curtains in the English style, and opening on a

prospect of classical beauty and antique renown; in his hands the rarest

specimens of that buried art which, like some belated golden harvest,

was now everywhere thrusting itself through the Neapolitan soil; and

about him men of taste and understanding, discussing the historic or

mythological meaning of the objects before them, and quoting Homer or

Horace in corroboration of their guesses.

Several visitors had joined the party since Odo's entrance; and it was

from a group of these later arrivals that the voice had reached him. He

looked round and saw a man of refined and scholarly appearance, dressed

en abbe, as was the general habit in Rome and Naples, and holding in one

hand the celebrated blue vase cut in cameo which Sir William had

recently purchased from the Barberini family.

"These reliefs," the stranger was saying, "whether cut in the substance

itself, or afterward affixed to the glass, certainly belong to the

Grecian period of cameo-work, and recall by the purity of their design

the finest carvings of Dioskorides." His beautifully-modulated Italian

was tinged by a slight foreign accent, which seemed to connect him still

more definitely with the episode his voice recalled. Odo turned to a

gentleman at his side and asked the speaker's name.

"That," was the reply, "is the abate de Crucis, a scholar and

cognoscente, as you perceive, and at present attached to the household

of the Papal Nuncio."

Instantly Odo beheld the tumultuous scene in the Duke's apartments, and

heard the indictment of Heiligenstern falling in tranquil accents from

the very lips which were now, in the same tone, discussing the date of a

Greek cameo vase. Even in that moment of disorder he had been struck by

the voice and aspect of the agent of the Holy Office, and by a singular

distinction that seemed to set the man himself above the coil of

passions in which his action was involved. To Odo's spontaneous yet

reflective temper there was something peculiarly impressive in the kind

of detachment which implies, not obtuseness or indifference, but a

higher sensitiveness disciplined by choice. Now he felt a renewed pang

of regret that such qualities should be found in the service of the

opposition; but the feeling was not incompatible with a wish to be more

nearly acquainted with their possessor.

The two years elapsing since Odo's departure from Pianura had widened if

they had not lifted his outlook. If he had lost something of his early

enthusiasm he had exchanged it for a larger experience of cities and

men, and for the self-command born of varied intercourse. He had reached

a point where he was able to survey his past dispassionately and to

disentangle the threads of the intrigue in which he had so nearly lost

his footing. The actual circumstances of his escape were still wrapped

in mystery: he could only conjecture that the Duchess, foreseeing the

course events would take, had planned with Cantapresto to save him in

spite of himself. His nocturnal flight down the river had carried him to

Ponte di Po, the point where the Piana flows into the Po, the latter

river forming for a few miles the southern frontier of the duchy. Here

his passport had taken him safely past the customs-officer, and

following the indications of the boatman, he had found, outside the

miserable village clustered about the customs, a travelling-chaise which

brought him before the next night-fall to Monte Alloro.

Of the real danger from which this timely retreat had removed him,

Gamba's subsequent letters had brought ample proof. It was indeed mainly

against himself that both parties, perhaps jointly, had directed their

attack; designing to take him in the toils ostensibly prepared for the

Illuminati. His evasion known, the Holy Office had contented itself with

imprisoning Heiligenstern in one of the Papal fortresses near the

Adriatic, while his mistress, though bred in the Greek confession, was

confined in a convent of the Sepolte Vive and his Oriental servant sent

to the Duke's galleys. As to those suspected of affiliations with the

forbidden sect, fines and penances were imposed on a few of the least

conspicuous, while the chief offenders, either from motives of policy or

thanks to their superior adroitness, were suffered to escape without a

reprimand. After this, Gamba's letters reported, the duchy had lapsed

into its former state of quiescence. Prince Ferrante had been seriously

ailing since the night of the electrical treatment, but the Pope having

sent his private physician to Pianura, the boy had rallied under the

latter's care. The Duke, as was natural, had suffered an acute relapse

of piety, spending his time in expiatory pilgrimages to the various

votive churches of the duchy, and declining to transact any public

business till he should have compiled with his own hand a calendar of

the lives of the saints, with the initial letters painted in miniature,

which he designed to present to his Holiness at Easter.

Meanwhile Odo, at Monte Alloro, found himself in surroundings so

different from those he had left that it seemed incredible they should

exist in the same world. The Duke of Monte Alloro was that rare survival

of a stronger age, a cynic. In a period of sentimental optimism, of

fervid enthusiasms and tearful philanthropy, he represented the

pleasure-loving prince of the Renaissance, crushing his people with

taxes but dazzling them with festivities; infuriating them by his

disregard of the public welfare, but fascinating them by his good looks,

his tolerance of old abuses, his ridicule of the monks, and by the

careless libertinage which had founded the fortunes of more than one

middle-class husband and father--for the Duke always paid well for what

he appropriated. He had grown old in his pleasant sins, and these, as

such raiment will, had grown old and dingy with him; but if no longer

splendid he was still splendour-loving, and drew to his court the most

brilliant adventurers of Italy. Spite of his preference for such

company, he had a nobler side, the ruins of a fine but uncultivated

intelligence, and a taste for all that was young, generous and high in

looks and courage. He was at once drawn to Odo, who instinctively

addressed himself to these qualities, and whose conversation and manners

threw into relief the vulgarity of the old Duke's cronies. The latter

was the shrewd enough to enjoy the contrast at the expense of his

sycophants' vanity; and the cavaliere Valsecca was for a while the

reigning favourite. It would have been hard to say whether his patron

was most tickled by his zeal for economic reforms, or by his faith in

the perfectibility of man. Both these articles of Odo's creed drew tears

of enjoyment from the old Duke's puffy eyes; and he was never tired of

declaring that only his hatred for his nephew of Pianura induced him to

accord his protection to so dangerous an enemy of society.

Odo at first fancied that it was in response to a mere whim of the

Duke's that he had been despatched to Monte Alloro; but he soon

perceived that the invitation had been inspired by Maria Clementina's

wish. Some three months after Odo's arrival, Cantapresto suddenly

appeared with a packet of letters from the Duchess. Among them her

Highness had included a few lines to Odo, whom she briefly adjured not

to return to Pianura, but to comply in all things with her uncle's

desires. Soon after this the old Duke sent for Odo, and asked him how

his present mode of life agreed with his tastes. Odo, who had learned

that frankness was the surest way to the Duke's favour, replied that,

while nothing could be more agreeable than the circumstances of his

sojourn at Monte Alloro, he must own to a wish to travel when the

occasion offered.

"Why, this is as I fancied," replied the Duke, who held in his hand an

open letter on which Odo recognised Maria Clementina's seal. "We have

always," he continued, "spoken plainly with each other, and I will not

conceal from you that it is for your best interests that you should

remain away from Pianura for the present. The Duke, as you doubtless

divine, is anxious for your return, and her Highness, for that very

reason, is urgent that you should prolong your absence. It is notorious

that the Duke soon wearies of those about him, and that your best chance

of regaining his favour is to keep out of his reach and let your enemies

hang themselves in the noose they have prepared for you. For my part, I

am always glad to do an ill-turn to that snivelling friar, my nephew,

and the more so when I can seriously oblige a friend; and, as you have

perhaps guessed, the Duke dares not ask for your return while I show a

fancy for your company. But this," added he with an ironical twinkle,

"is a tame place for a young man of your missionary temper, and I have a

mind to send you on a visit to that arch-tyrant Ferdinand of Naples, in

whose dominions a man may yet burn for heresy or be drawn and quartered

for poaching on a nobleman's preserves. I am advised that some rare

treasures have lately been taken from the excavations there and I should

be glad if you would oblige me by acquiring a few for my gallery. I will

give you letters to a cognoscente of my acquaintance, who will put his

experience at the disposal of your excellent taste, and the funds at

your service will, I hope, enable you to outbid the English brigands

who, as the Romans say, would carry off the Colosseum if it were

portable."

In all this Odo discerned Maria Clementina's hand, and an instinctive

resistance made him hang back upon his patron's proposal. But the only

alternative was to return to Pianura; and every letter from Gamba urged

on him (for the very reasons the Duke had given) the duty of keeping out

of reach as the surest means of saving himself and the cause to which he

was pledged. Nothing remained but a graceful acquiescence; and early the

next spring he started for Naples.

His first impulse had been to send Cantapresto back to the Duchess. He

knew that he owed his escape me grave difficulties to the soprano's

prompt action on the night of Heiligenstern's arrest; but he was equally

sure that such action might not always be as favourable to his plans. It

was plain that Cantapresto was paid to spy on him, and that whenever

Odo's intentions clashed with those of his would-be protectors the

soprano would side with the latter. But there was something in the air

of Monte Alloro which dispelled such considerations, or at least

weakened the impulse to act on them. Cantapresto as usual had attracted

notice at court. His glibness and versatility amused the Duke, and to

Odo he was as difficult to put off as a bad habit. He had become so

accomplished a servant that he seemed a sixth sense of his master's; and

when the latter prepared to start on his travels Cantapresto took his

usual seat in the chaise.

To a traveller of Odo's temper there could be few more agreeable

journeys than the one on which he was setting out, and the Duke being in

no haste to have his commission executed, his messenger had full leisure

to enjoy every stage of the way. He profited by this to visit several of

the small principalities north of the Apennines before turning toward

Genoa, whence he was to take ship for the South. When he left Monte

Alloro the land had worn the bleached face of February, and it was

amazing to his northern-bred eyes to find himself, on the sea-coast, in

the full exuberance of summer. Seated by this halcyon shore, Genoa, in

its carved and frescoed splendour, just then celebrating with the

customary gorgeous ritual the accession of a new Doge, seemed to Odo

like the richly-inlaid frame of some Renaissance "triumph." But the

splendid houses with their marble peristyles, and the painted villas in

their orange-groves along the shore, housed a dull and narrow-minded

society, content to amass wealth and play biribi under the eyes of their

ancestral Vandykes, without any concern as to the questions agitating

the world. A kind of fat commercial dulness, a lack of that personal

distinction which justifies magnificence, seemed to Odo the prevailing

note of the place; nor was he sorry when his packet set sail for Naples.

Here indeed he found all the vivacity that Genoa lacked. Few cities

could at first acquaintance be more engaging to the stranger. Dull and

brown as it appeared after the rich tints of Genoa, yet so gloriously

did sea and land embrace it, so lavishly the sun gild and the moon

silver it, that it seemed steeped in the surrounding hues of nature. And

what a nature to eyes subdued to the sober tints of the north! Its

spectacular quality--that studied sequence of effects ranging from the

translucent outline of Capri and the fantastically blue mountains of the

coast, to Vesuvius lifting its torch above the plain--this prodigal

response to fancy's claims suggested the boundless invention of some

great scenic artist, some Olympian Veronese with sea and sky for a

palette. And then the city itself, huddled between bay and mountains,

and seething and bubbling like a Titan's cauldron! Here was life at its

source, not checked, directed, utilised, but gushing forth

uncontrollably through every fissure of the brown walls and reeking

streets--love and hatred, mirth and folly, impudence and greed, going

naked and unashamed as the lazzaroni on the quays. The variegated

surface of it all was fascinating to Odo. It set free his powers of

purely physical enjoyment, keeping all deeper sensations in abeyance.

These, however, presently found satisfaction in that other hidden beauty

of which city and plain were but the sumptuous drapery. It is hardly too

much to say that to the trained eyes of the day the visible Naples

hardly existed, so absorbed were they in the perusal of her buried past.

The fever of excavation was on every one. No social or political problem

could find a hearing while the subject of the last coin or bas-relief

from Pompeii or Herculanaeum remained undecided. Odo, at first an amused

spectator, gradually found himself engrossed in the fierce quarrels

raging over the date of an intaglio or the myth represented on an

amphora. The intrinsic beauty of the objects, and the light they shed on

one of the most brilliant phases of human history, were in fact

sufficient to justify the prevailing ardour; and the reconstructive

habit he had acquired from Crescenti lent a living interest to the

driest discussion between rival collectors.

Gradually other influences reasserted themselves. At the house of Sir

William Hamilton, then the centre of the most polished society in

Naples, he met not only artists and archeologists, but men of letters

and of affairs. Among these, he was peculiarly drawn to the two

distinguished economists, the abate Galiani and the cavaliere

Filangieri, in whose company he enjoyed for the first time sound

learning unhampered by pedantry. The lively Galiani proved that social

tastes and a broad wit are not incompatible with more serious interests;

and Filangieri threw the charm of a graceful personality over any topic

he discussed. In the latter, indeed, courtly, young and romantic, a

thinker whose intellectual acuteness was steeped in moral emotion, Odo

beheld the type of the new chivalry, an ideal leader of the campaign

against social injustice. Filangieri represented the extremest optimism

of the day. His sense of existing abuses was only equalled by his faith

in their speedy amendment. Love was to cure all evils: the love of man

for man, the effusive all-embracing sympathy of the school of the

Vicaire Savoyard, was to purge the emotions by tenderness and pity. In

Gamba, the victim of the conditions he denounced, the sense of present

hardship prevailed over the faith in future improvement; while

Filangieri's social superiority mitigated his view of the evils and

magnified the efficacy of the proposed remedies. Odo's days passed

agreeably in such intercourse, or in the excitement of excursions to the

ruined cities; and as the court and the higher society of Naples offered

little to engage him, he gradually restricted himself to the small

circle of chosen spirits gathered at the villa Hamilton. To these he

fancied the abate de Crucis might prove an interesting addition; and the

desire to learn something of this problematic person induced him to quit

the villa at the moment when the abate took leave.

They found themselves together on the threshold; and Odo, recalling to

the other the circumstances of their first meeting, proposed that they

should dismiss their carriages and regain the city on foot. De Crucis

readily consented; and they were soon descending the hill of Posilipo.

Here and there a turn in the road brought them to an open space whence

they commanded the bay from Procida to Sorrento, with Capri afloat in

liquid gold and the long blue shadow of Vesuvius stretching like a

menace toward the city. The spectacle was one of which Odo never

wearied; but today it barely diverted him from the charms of his

companion's talk. The abate de Crucis had that quality of repressed

enthusiasm, of an intellectual sensibility tempered by self-possession,

which exercises the strongest attraction over a mind not yet master of

itself. Though all he said had a personal note he seemed to withhold

himself even in the moment of greatest expansion: like some prince who

should enrich his favourites from the public treasury but keep his

private fortune unimpaired. In the course of their conversation Odo

learned that though of Austrian birth his companion was of mingled

English and Florentine parentage: a fact perhaps explaining the mixture

of urbanity and reserve that lent such charm to his manner. He told Odo

that his connection with the Holy Office had been only temporary, and

that, having contracted a severe cold the previous winter in Germany, he

had accepted a secretaryship in the service of the Papal Nuncio in order

to enjoy the benefits of a mild climate. "By profession," he added, "I

am a pedagogue, and shall soon travel to Rome, where I have been called

by Prince Bracciano to act as governor to his son; and meanwhile I am

taking advantage of my residence here to indulge my taste for

antiquarian studies."

He went on to praise the company they had just left, declaring that he

knew no better way for a young man to form his mind than by frequenting

the society of men of conflicting views and equal capacity. "Nothing,"

said he, "is more injurious to the growth of character than to be

secluded from argument and opposition; as nothing is healthier than to

be obliged to find good reasons for one's beliefs on pain of

surrendering them."

"But," said Odo, struck with this declaration, "to a man of your cloth

there is one belief which never surrenders to reason."

The other smiled. "True," he agreed; "but I often marvel to see how

little our opponents know of that belief. The wisest of them seem in the

case of those children at our country fairs who gape at the incredible

things depicted on the curtains of the booths, without asking themselves

whether the reality matches its presentment. The weakness of human

nature has compelled us to paint the outer curtain of the sanctuary in

gaudy colours, and the malicious fancy of our enemies has given a

monstrous outline to these pictures; but what are such vanities to one

who has passed beyond, and beheld the beauty of the King's daughter, all

glorious within?"

As though unwilling to linger on such grave topics, he turned the talk

to the scene at their feet, questioning Odo as to the impression Naples

had made on him. He listened courteously to the young man's comments on

the wretched state of the peasantry, the extravagances of the court and

nobility and the judicial corruption which made the lower classes submit

to any injustice rather than seek redress through the courts. De Crucis

agreed with him in the main, admitting that the monopoly of corn, the

maintenance of feudal rights and the King's indifference to the graver

duties of his rank placed the kingdom of Naples far below such states as

Tuscany or Venetia; "though," he added, "I think our economists, in

praising one state at the expense of another, too often overlook those

differences of character and climate that must ever make it impossible

to govern different races in the same manner. Our peasants have a blunt

saying: Cut off the dog's tail and he is still a dog; and so I suspect

the most enlightened rule would hardly bring this prompt and choleric

people, living on a volcanic soil amid a teeming vegetation, into any

resemblance with the clear-headed Tuscan or the gentle and dignified

Roman."

As he spoke they emerged upon the Chiaia, where at that hour the quality

took the air in their carriages, while the lower classes thronged the

footway. A more vivacious scene no city of Europe could present. The

gilt coaches drawn by six or eight of the lively Neapolitan horses,

decked with plumes and artificial flowers and preceded by running

footmen who beat the foot-passengers aside with long staves; the

richly-dressed ladies seated in this never-ending file of carriages,

bejewelled like miraculous images and languidly bowing to their friends;

the throngs of citizens and their wives in holiday dress; the sellers of

sherbet, ices and pastry bearing their trays and barrels through the

crowd with strange cries and the jingling of bells; the friars of every

order in their various habits, the street-musicians, the half-naked

lazzaroni, cripples and beggars, who fringed the throng like the line of

scum edging a fair lake;--this medley of sound and colour, which in fact

resembled some sudden growth of the fiery soil, was an expressive

comment on the abate's words.

"Look," he continued, as he and Odo drew aside to escape the mud from an

emblazoned chariot, "at the gold-leaf on the panels of that coach and

the gold-lace on the liveries of those lacqueys. Is there any other city

in the world where gold is so prodigally used? Where the monks gild

their relics, the nobility their servants, the apothecaries their pills,

the very butchers their mutton? One might fancy their bright sun had set

them the example! And how cold and grey all soberer tints must seem to

these children of Apollo! Well--so it is with their religion and their

daily life. I wager half those naked wretches yonder would rather attend

a fine religious service, with abundance of gilt candles, music from

gilt organ-pipes, and incense from gilt censers, than eat a good meal or

sleep in a decent bed; as they would rather starve under a handsome

merry King that has the name of being the best billiard-player in Europe

than go full under one of your solemn reforming Austrian Archdukes!"

The words recalled to Odo Crescenti's theory of the influence of

character and climate on the course of history; and this subject soon

engrossing both speakers, they wandered on, inattentive to their

surroundings, till they found themselves in the thickest concourse of

the Toledo. Here for a moment the dense crowd hemmed them in; and as

they stood observing the humours of the scene, Odo's eye fell on the

thick-set figure of a man in doctor's dress, who was being led through

the press by two agents of the Inquisition. The sight was too common to

have fixed his attention, had he not recognised with a start the

irascible red-faced professor who, on his first visit to Vivaldi, had

defended the Diluvial theory of creation. The sight raised a host of

memories from which Odo would gladly have beaten a retreat; but the

crowd held him in check and a moment later he saw that the doctor's eyes

were fixed on him with an air of recognition. A movement of pity

succeeded his first impulse, and turning to de Crucis he exclaimed:--"I

see yonder an old acquaintance who seems in an unlucky plight and with

whom I should be glad to speak."

The other, following his glance, beckoned to one of the sbirri, who made

his way through the throng with the alacrity of one summoned by a

superior. De Crucis exchanged a few words with him, and then signed to

him to return to his charge, who presently vanished in some fresh

shifting of the crowd.

"Your friend," said de Crucis, "has been summoned before the Holy Office

to answer a charge of heresy preferred by the authorities. He has lately

been appointed to the chair of physical sciences in the University here,

and has doubtless allowed himself to publish openly views that were

better expounded in the closet. His offence, however, appears to be a

mild one, and I make no doubt he will be set free in a few days."

This, however, did not satisfy Odo; and he asked de Crucis if there were

no way of speaking with the doctor at once.

His companion hesitated. "It can easily be arranged," said he;

"but--pardon me, cavaliere--are you well-advised in mixing yourself in

such matters?"

"I am well-advised in seeking to serve a friend!" Odo somewhat hotly

returned; and de Crucis, with a faint smile of approval, replied

quietly: "In that case I will obtain permission for you to visit your

friend in the morning."

He was true to his word; and the next forenoon Odo, accompanied by an

officer of police, was taken to the prison of the Inquisition. Here he

found his old acquaintance seated in a clean commodious room and reading

Aristotle's "History of Animals," the only volume of his library that he

had been permitted to carry with him. He welcomed Odo heartily, and on

the latter's enquiring what had brought him to this plight, replied with

some dignity that he had been led there in the fulfilment of his duty.

"Some months ago," he continued, "I was summoned hither to profess the

natural sciences in the University; a summons I readily accepted, since

I hoped, by the study of a volcanic soil, to enlarge my knowledge of the

globe's formation. Such in fact was the case, but to my surprise my

researches led me to adopt the views I had formerly combated, and I now

find myself in the ranks of the Vulcanists, or believers in the

secondary origin of the earth: a view you may remember I once opposed

with all the zeal of inexperience. Having firmly established every point

in my argument according to the Baconian method of investigation, I felt

it my duty to enlighten my scholars; and in the course of my last

lecture I announced the result of my investigations. I was of course

aware of the inevitable result; but the servants of Truth have no choice

but to follow where she calls, and many have joyfully traversed stonier

places than I am likely to travel."

Nothing could exceed the respect with which Odo heard this simple

confession of faith. It was as though the speaker had unconsciously

convicted him of remissness, of cowardice even; so vain and windy his

theorising seemed, judged by the other's deliberate act! Yet placed as

he was, what could he do, how advance their common end, but by passively

waiting on events? At least, he reflected, he could perform the trivial

service of trying to better his friend's case; and this he eagerly

offered to attempt. The doctor thanked him, but without any great

appearance of emotion: Odo was struck by the change which had

transformed a heady and intemperate speaker into a model of philosophic

calm. The doctor, indeed, seemed far more concerned for the safety of

his library and his cabinet of minerals than for his own. "Happily,"

said he, "I am not a man of family, and can therefore sacrifice my

liberty with a clear conscience: a fact I am the more thankful for when

I recall the moral distress of our poor friend Vivaldi, when compelled

to desert his post rather than be separated from his daughter."

The name brought the colour to Odo's brow, and with an embarrassed air

he asked what news the doctor had of their friend.

"Alas," said the other, "the last was of his death, which happened two

years since in Pavia. The Sardinian government had, as you probably

know, confiscated his small property on his leaving the state, and I am

told he died in great poverty, and in sore anxiety for his daughter's

future." He added that these events had taken place before his own

departure from Turin, and that since then he had learned nothing of

Fulvia's fate, save that she was said to have made her home with an aunt

who lived in a town of the Veneto.

Odo listened in silence. The lapse of time, and the absence of any links

of association, had dimmed the girl's image in his breast; but at the

mere sound of her name it lived again, and he felt her interwoven with

his deepest fibres. The picture of her father's death and of her own

need filled him with an ineffectual pity, and for a moment he thought of

seeking her out; but the other could recall neither the name of the town

she had removed to nor that of the relative who had given her a home.

To aid the good doctor was a simpler business. The intervention of de

Crucis and Odo's own influence sufficed to effect his release, and on

the payment of a heavy fine (in which Odo privately assisted him) he was

reinstated in his chair. The only promise exacted by the Holy Office was

that he should in future avoid propounding his own views on questions

already decided by Scripture, and to this he readily agreed, since, as

he shrewdly remarked to Odo, his opinions were now well-known, and any

who wished farther instruction had only to apply to him privately.

The old Duke having invited Odo to return to Monte Alloro with such

treasures as he had collected for the ducal galleries, the young man

resolved to visit Rome on his way to the North. His acquaintance with de

Crucis had grown into something like friendship since their joint effort

in behalf of the imprisoned sage, and the abate preparing to set out

about the same time, the two agreed to travel together. The road leading

from Naples to Rome was at that time one of the worst in Italy, and was

besides so ill-provided with inns that there was no inducement to linger

on the way. De Crucis, however, succeeded in enlivening even this

tedious journey. He was a good linguist and a sound classical scholar,

besides having, as he had told Odo, a pronounced taste for antiquarian

research. In addition to this, he performed agreeably on the violin, and

was well-acquainted with the history of music. His chief distinction,

however, lay in the ease with which he wore his accomplishments, and in

a breadth of view that made it possible to discuss with him many

subjects distasteful to most men of his cloth. The sceptical or

licentious ecclesiastic was common enough; but Odo had never before met

a priest who united serious piety with this indulgent temper, or who had

learning enough to do justice to the arguments of his opponents.

On his venturing one evening to compliment de Crucis on these qualities,

the latter replied with a smile: "Whatever has been lately advanced

against the Jesuits, it can hardly be denied that they were good

school-masters; and it is to them I owe the talents you have been

pleased to admire. Indeed," he continued, quietly fingering his violin,

"I was myself bred in the order: a fact I do not often make known in the

present heated state of public opinion, but which I never conceal when

commended for any quality that I owe to the Society rather than to my

own merit."

Surprise for the moment silenced Odo; for though it was known that Italy

was full of former Jesuits who had been permitted to remain in the

country as secular priests, and even to act as tutors or professors in

private families, he had never thought of de Crucis in this connection.

The latter, seeing his surprise, went on: "Once a Jesuit, always a

Jesuit, I suppose. I at least owe the Society too much not to own my

debt when the occasion offers. Nor could I ever see the force of the

charge so often brought against us: that we sacrifice everything to the

glory of the order. For what is the glory of the order? Our own motto

has declared it: Ad majorem Dei gloriam--who works for the Society works

for its Master. If our zeal has been sometimes misdirected, our blood

has a thousand times witnessed to its sincerity. In the Indies, in

America, in England during the great persecution, and lately on our own

unnatural coasts, the Jesuits have died for Christ as joyfully as His

first disciples died for Him. Yet these are but a small number in

comparison with the countless servants of the order who, labouring in

far countries among savage peoples, or surrounded by the heretical

enemies of our faith, have died the far bitterer death of moral

isolation: setting themselves to their task with the knowledge that

their lives were but so much indistinguishable dust to be added to the

sum of human effort. What association founded on human interests has

ever commanded such devotion? And what merely human authority could

count on such unquestioning obedience, not in a mob of poor illiterate

monks, but in men chosen for their capacity and trained to the exercise

of their highest faculties? Yet there have never lacked such men to

serve the Order; and as one of our enemies has said--our noblest enemy,

the great Pascal--'je crois volontiers aux histoires dont les temoins se

font egorger.'"

He did not again revert to his connection with the Jesuits; but in the

farther course of their acquaintance Odo was often struck by the

firmness with which he testified to the faith that was in him, without

using the jargon of piety, or seeming, by his own attitude, to cast a

reflection on that of others. He was indeed master of that worldly

science which the Jesuits excelled in imparting, and which, though it

might sink to hypocrisy in smaller natures, became in a finely-tempered

spirit, the very flower of Christian courtesy.

Odo had often spoken to de Crucis of the luxurious lives led by many of

the monastic orders in Naples. It might be true enough that the monks

themselves, and even their abbots, fared on fish and vegetables, and

gave their time to charitable and educational work; but it was

impossible to visit the famous monastery of San Martino, or that of the

Carthusians at Camaldoli, without observing that the anchoret's cell had

expanded into a delightful apartment, with bedchamber, library and

private chapel, and his cabbage-plot into a princely garden. De Crucis

admitted the truth of the charge, explaining it in part by the character

of the Neapolitan people, and by the tendency of the northern traveller

to forget that such apparent luxuries as spacious rooms, shady groves

and the like are regarded as necessities in a hot climate. He urged,

moreover, that the monastic life should not be judged by a few isolated

instances; and on the way to Rome he proposed that Odo, by way of seeing

the other side of the question, should visit the ancient foundation of

the Benedictines on Monte Cassino.

The venerable monastery, raised on its height over the busy vale of

Garigliano, like some contemplative spirit above the conflicting

problems of life, might well be held to represent the nobler side of

Christian celibacy. For nearly a thousand years its fortified walls had

been the stronghold of the humanities, and generations of students had

cherished and added to the treasures of the famous library. But the

Benedictine rule was as famous for good works as for learning, and its

comparative abstention from dogmatic controversy and from the mechanical

devotion of some of the other orders had drawn to it men of superior

mind, who sought in the monastic life the free exercise of the noblest

activities rather than a sanctified refuge from action. This was

especially true of the monastery of Monte Cassino, whither many scholars

had been attracted and where the fathers had long had the highest name

for learning and beneficence. The monastery, moreover, in addition to

its charitable and educational work among the poor, maintained a school

of theology to which students came from all parts of Italy; and their

presence lent an unwonted life to the great labyrinth of courts and

cloisters.

The abbot, with whom de Crucis was well-acquainted, welcomed the

travellers warmly, making them free of the library and the archives and

pressing them to prolong their visit. Under the spell of these

influences they lingered on from day to day; and to Odo they were the

pleasantest days he had known. To be waked before dawn by the bell

ringing for lauds--to rise from the narrow bed in his white-washed cell,

and opening his casement look forth over the haze-enveloped valley, the

dark hills of the Abruzzi and the remote gleam of sea touched into being

by the sunrise--to hasten through hushed echoing corridors to the

church, where in a grey resurrection-light the fathers were intoning the

solemn office of renewal--this morning ablution of the spirit, so like

the bodily plunge into clear cold water, seemed to attune the mind to

the fullest enjoyment of what was to follow: the hours of study, the

talks with the monks, the strolls through cloister or garden, all

punctuated by the recurring summons to devotion. Yet for all its latent

significance it remained to him a purely sensuous impression, the vision

of a golden leisure: not a solution of life's perplexities, but at best

an honourable escape from them.

3.2.

"To know Rome is to have assisted at the councils of destiny!" This cry

of a more famous traveller must have struggled for expression in Odo's

breast as the great city, the city of cities, laid her irresistible hold

upon him. His first impression, as he drove in the clear evening light

from the Porta del Popolo to his lodgings in the Via Sistina, was of a

prodigious accumulation of architectural effects, a crowding of century

on century, all fused in the crucible of the Roman sun, so that each

style seemed linked to the other by some subtle affinity of colour.

Nowhere else, surely, is the traveller's first sight so crowded with

surprises, with conflicting challenges to eye and brain. Here, as he

passed, was a fragment of the ancient Servian wall, there a new stucco

shrine embedded in the bricks of a medieval palace; on one hand a lofty

terrace crowned by a row of mouldering busts, on the other a tower with

machicolated parapet, its flanks encrusted with bits of Roman sculpture

and the escutcheons of seventeenth-century Popes. Opposite, perhaps, one

of Fuga's golden-brown churches, with windy saints blowing out of their

niches, overlooked the nereids of a barocco fountain, or an old house

propped itself like a palsied beggar against a row of Corinthian

columns; while everywhere flights of steps led up and down to hanging

gardens or under archways, and each turn revealed some distant glimpse

of convent-walls on the slope of a vineyard or of red-brown ruins

profiled against the dim sea-like reaches of the Campagna.

Afterward, as order was born out of chaos, and he began to thread his

way among the centuries, this first vision lost something of its

intensity; yet it was always, to the last, through the eye that Rome

possessed him. Her life, indeed, as though in obedience to such a

setting, was an external, a spectacular business, from the wild

animation of the cattle-market in the Forum or the hucksters' traffic

among the fountains of the Piazza Navona, to the pompous entertainments

in the cardinals' palaces and the ever-recurring religious ceremonies

and processions. Pius VI., in the reaction from Ganganelli's democratic

ways, had restored the pomp and ceremonial of the Vatican with the

religious discipline of the Holy Office; and never perhaps had Rome been

more splendid on the surface or more silent and empty within. Odo, at

times, as he moved through some assemblage of cardinals and nobles, had

the sensation of walking through a huge reverberating palace, decked out

with all the splendours of art but long since abandoned of men. The

superficial animation, the taste for music and antiquities, all the

dilettantisms of an idle and irresponsible society, seemed to him to

shrivel to dust in the glare of that great past that lit up every corner

of the present.

Through his own connections, and the influence of de Crucis, he saw all

that was best not only among the nobility, but in that ecclesiastical

life now more than ever predominant in Rome. Here at last he was face to

face with the mighty Sphinx, and with the bleaching bones of those who

had tried to guess her riddle. Wherever he went these "lost adventurers"

walked the streets with him, gliding between the Princes of the Church

in the ceremonies of Saint Peter's and the Lateran, or mingling in the

company that ascended the state staircase at some cardinal's levee.

He met indeed many accomplished and amiable ecclesiastics, but it seemed

to him that the more thoughtful among them had either acquired their

peace of mind at the cost of a certain sensitiveness, or had taken

refuge in a study of the past, as the early hermits fled to the desert

from the disorders of Antioch and Alexandria. None seemed disposed to

face the actual problems of life, and this attitude of caution or

indifference had produced a stagnation of thought that contrasted

strongly with the animation of Sir William Hamilton's circle in Naples.

The result in Odo's case was a reaction toward the pleasures of his age;

and of these Rome had but few to offer. He spent some months in the

study of the antique, purchasing a few good examples of sculpture for

the Duke, and then, without great reluctance, set out for Monte Alloro.

Here he found a changed atmosphere. The Duke welcomed him handsomely,

and bestowed the highest praise on the rarities he had collected; but

for the moment the court was ruled by a new favourite, to whom Odo's

coming was obviously unwelcome. This adroit adventurer, whose name was

soon to become notorious throughout Europe, had taken the old prince by

his darling weaknesses, and Odo, having no mind to share in the excesses

of the precious couple, seized the first occasion to set out again on

his travels.

His course had now become one of aimless wandering; for prudence still

forbade his return to Pianura, and his patron's indifference left him

free to come and go as he chose. He had brought from Rome--that albergo

d'ira--a settled melancholy of spirit, which sought refuge in such

distractions as the moment offered. In such a mood change of scene was a

necessity, and he resolved to employ the next months in visiting several

of the mid-Italian cities. Toward Florence he was specially drawn by the

fact that Alfieri now lived there; but, as often happens after such

separations, the reunion was a disappointment. Alfieri, indeed, warmly

welcomed his friend; but he was engrossed in his dawning passion for the

Countess of Albany, and that lady's pitiable situation excluded all

other interests from his mind. To Odo, to whom the years had brought an

increasing detachment, this self-absorption seemed an arrest in growth;

for Alfieri's early worship of liberty had not yet found its destined

channel of expression, and for the moment his enthusiasms had shrunk to

the compass of a romantic adventure. The friends parted after a few days

of unsatisfying intercourse; and it was under the influence of this

final disenchantment that Odo set out for Venice.

It was the vintage season, and the travellers descended from the

Apennines on a landscape diversified by the picturesque incidents of the

grape-gathering. On every slope stood some villa with awnings spread,

and merry parties were picnicking among the vines or watching the

peasants at their work. Cantapresto, who had shown great reluctance at

leaving Monte Alloro, where, as he declared, he found himself as snug as

an eel in a pasty, was now all eagerness to press forward; and Odo was

in the mood to allow any influence to decide his course. He had an

invaluable courier in Cantapresto, whose enormous pretensions generally

assured him the best lodging and the fastest conveyance to be obtained,

and who was never happier than when outwitting a rival emissary, or

bribing a landlord to serve up on Odo's table the repast ordered in

advance for some distinguished traveller. His impatience to reach

Venice, which he described as the scene of all conceivable delights, had

on this occasion tripled his zeal, and they travelled rapidly to Padua,

where he had engaged a burchiello for the passage down the Brenta. Here,

however, he found he had been outdone at his own game; for the servant

of an English Duke had captured the burchiello and embarked his noble

party before Cantapresto reached the wharf. This being the season of the

villeggiatura, when the Venetian nobility were exchanging visits on the

mainland, every conveyance was in motion and no other boat to be had for

a week; while as for the "bucentaur" or public bark, which was just then

getting under way, it was already packed to the gunwale with Jews,

pedlars and such vermin, and the captain swore by the three thousand

relics of Saint Justina that he had no room on board for so much as a

hungry flea.

Odo, who had accompanied Cantapresto to the water-side, was listening to

these assurances and to the soprano's vain invectives, when a

well-dressed young man stepped up to the group. This gentleman, whose

accent and dress showed him to be a Frenchman of quality, told Odo that

he was come from Vicenza, whither he had gone to engage a company of

actors for his friend the Procuratore Bra, who was entertaining a

distinguished company at his villa on the Brenta; that he was now

returning with his players, and that he would be glad to convey Odo so

far on his road to Venice. His friend's seat, he added, was near Oriago,

but a few miles above Fusina, where a public conveyance might always be

found; so that Odo would doubtless be able to proceed the same night to

Venice.

This civil offer Odo at once accepted, and the Frenchman thereupon

suggested that, as the party was to set out the next day at sunrise, the

two should sup together and pass the intervening hours in such

diversions as the city offered. They returned to the inn, where the

actors were also lodged, and Odo's host having ordered a handsome

supper, proposed, with his guest's permission, to invite the leading

members of the company to partake of it. He departed on this errand; and

great was Odo's wonder, when the door reopened, to discover, among the

party it admitted, his old acquaintance of Vercelli, the Count of

Castelrovinato. The latter, whose dress and person had been refurbished,

and who now wore an air of rakish prosperity, greeted him with evident

pleasure, and, while their entertainer was engaged in seating the ladies

of the company, gave him a brief account of the situation.

The young French gentleman (whom he named as the Marquis de

Coeur-Volant) had come to Italy some months previously on the grand

tour, and having fallen a victim to the charms of Venice, had declared

that, instead of continuing on his travels, he meant to complete his

education in that famous school of pleasure. Being master of his own

fortune, he had hired a palace on the Grand Canal, had dispatched his

governor (a simple archaeologist) on a mission of exploration to Sicily

and Greece, and had devoted himself to an assiduous study of Venetian

manners. Among those contributing to his instruction was Mirandolina of

Chioggia, who had just completed a successful engagement at the theatre

of San Moise in Venice. Wishing to detain her in the neighbourhood, her

adorer had prevailed on his friend the Procuratore to give a series of

comedies at his villa of Bellocchio and had engaged to provide him with

a good company of performers. Miranda was of course selected as prima

amorosa; and the Marquess, under Castelrovinato's guidance, had then set

out to collect the rest of the company. This he had succeeded in doing,

and was now returning to Bellocchio, where Miranda was to meet them. Odo

was the more diverted at the hazard which had brought him into such

company, as the Procuratore Bra was one of the noblemen to whom the old

Duke had specially recommended him. On learning this, the Marquess urged

him to present his letter of introduction on arriving at Bellocchio,

where the Procuratore, who was noted for hospitality to strangers, would

doubtless insist on his joining the assembled party. This Odo declined

to do; but his curiosity to see Mirandolina made him hope that chance

would soon throw him in the Procuratore's way.

Meanwhile supper was succeeded by music and dancing, and the company

broke up only in time to proceed to the landing-place where their barge

awaited them. This was a private burchiello of the Procuratore's with a

commodious antechamber for the servants, and a cabin cushioned in

damask. Into this agreeable retreat the actresses were packed with all

their bags and band-boxes; and their travelling-cloaks being rolled into

pillows, they were soon asleep in a huddle of tumbled finery.

Odo and his host preferred to take the air on deck. The sun was rising

above the willow-clad banks of the Brenta, and it was pleasant to glide

in the clear early light past sleeping gardens and villas, and vineyards

where the peasants were already at work. The wind setting from the sea,

they travelled slowly and had full leisure to view the succession of

splendid seats interspersed with gardens, the thriving villages, and the

poplar-groves festooned with vines. Coeur-Volant spoke eloquently of the

pleasures to be enjoyed in this delightful season of the villeggiatura.

"Nowhere," said he, "do people take their pleasures so easily and

naturally as in Venice. My countrymen claim a superiority in this art,

and it may be they possessed it a generation ago. But what a morose

place is France become since philosophy has dethroned enjoyment! If you

go on a visit to one of our noblemen's seats, what do you find there, I

ask? Cards, comedies, music, the opportunity for an agreeable intrigue

in the society of your equals? No--but a hostess engaged in suckling and

bathing her brats, or in studying chemistry and optics with some dirty

school-master, who is given the seat of honour at table and a pavilion

in the park to which he may retire when weary of the homage of the

great; while as for the host, he is busy discussing education or

political economy with his unfortunate guests, if, indeed, he is not

dragging them through leagues of mud and dust to inspect his latest

experiments in forestry and agriculture, or to hear a pack of snuffling

school-children singing hymns to the God of Nature! And what," he

continued, "is the result of it all? The peasants are starving, the

taxes are increasing, the virtuous landlords are ruining themselves in

farming on scientific principles, the tradespeople are grumbling because

the nobility do not spend their money in Paris, the court is dull, the

clergy are furious, the Queen mopes, the King is frightened, and the

whole French people are yawning themselves to death from Normandy to

Provence."

"Yes," said Castelrovinato with his melancholy smile, "the test of

success is to have had one's money's worth; but experience, which is

dried pleasure, is at best a dusty diet, as we know. Yonder, in a fold

of those hills," he added, pointing to the cluster of Euganean mountains

just faintly pencilled above the plain, "lies the little fief from which

I take my name. Acre by acre, tree by tree, it has gone to pay for my

experiments, not in agriculture but in pleasure; and whenever I look

over at it from Venice and reflect on what each rood of ground or trunk

of tree has purchased, I wonder to see my life as bare as ever for all

that I have spent on it."

The young Marquess shrugged his shoulders. "And would your life," he

exclaimed, "have been a whit less bare had you passed it in your

ancestral keep among those windy hills, in the company of swineherds and

charcoal-burners, with a milk-maid for your mistress and the village

priest for your partner at picquet?"

"Perhaps not," the other agreed. "There is a tale of a man who spent his

life in wishing he had lived differently; and when he died he was

surrounded by a throng of spectral shapes, each one exactly like the

other, who, on his asking what they were, replied: 'We are all the

different lives you might have lived.'"

"If you are going to tell ghost-stories," cried Coeur-Volant, "I will

call for a bottle of Canary!"

"And I," rejoined the Count good-humouredly, "will try to coax the

ladies forth with a song;" and picking up his lute, which always lay

within reach, he began to sing in the Venetian dialect:--

There's a villa on the Brenta

Where the statues, white as snow,

All along the water-terrace

Perch like sea-gulls in a row.

There's a garden on the Brenta

Where the fairest ladies meet,

Picking roses from the trellis

For the gallants at their feet.

There's an arbour on the Brenta

Made of yews that screen the light,

Where I kiss my girl at midday

Close as lovers kiss at night.

The players soon emerged at this call and presently the deck resounded

with song and laughter. All the company were familiar with the Venetian

bacaroles, and Castelrovinato's lute was passed from hand to hand, as

one after another, incited by the Marquess's Canary, tried to recall

some favourite measure--"La biondina in gondoleta" or "Guarda, che bella

luna."

Meanwhile life was stirring in the villages and gardens, and groups of

people appearing on the terraces overhanging the water. Never had Odo

beheld a livelier scene. The pillared houses with their rows of statues

and vases, the flights of marble steps descending to the gilded

river-gates, where boats bobbed against the landings and boatmen gasped

in the shade of their awnings; the marble trellises hung with grapes,

the gardens where parterres of flowers and parti-coloured gravel

alternated with the dusk of tunnelled yew-walks; the company playing at

bowls in the long alleys, or drinking chocolate in gazebos above the

river; the boats darting hither and thither on the stream itself, the

travelling-chaises, market-waggons and pannier-asses crowding the

causeway along the bank--all were unrolled before him with as little

effect of reality as the episodes woven in some gaily-tinted tapestry.

Even the peasants in the vineyards seemed as merry and thoughtless as

the quality in their gardens. The vintage-time is the holiday of the

rural year and the day's work was interspersed with frequent intervals

of relaxation. At the villages where the burchiello touched for

refreshments, handsome young women in scarlet bodices came on board with

baskets of melons, grapes, figs and peaches; and under the trellises on

the landings, lads and girls with flowers in their hair were dancing the

monferrina to the rattle of tambourines or the chant of some wandering

ballad-singer. These scenes were so engaging to the comedians that they

could not be restrained from going ashore and mingling in the village

diversions; and the Marquess, though impatient to rejoin his divinity,

was too volatile not to be drawn into the adventure. The whole party

accordingly disembarked, and were presently giving an exhibition of

their talents to the assembled idlers, the Pantaloon, Harlequin and

Doctor enacting a comical intermezzo which Cantapresto had that morning

composed for them, while Scaramouch and Columbine joined the dancers,

and the rest of the company, seizing on a train of donkeys laden with

vegetables for the Venetian market, stripped these patient animals of

their panniers, and mounting them bareback started a Corso around the

village square amid the invectives of the drivers and the applause of

the crowd.

Day was declining when the Marquess at last succeeded in driving his

flock to their fold, and the moon sent a quiver of brightness across the

water as the burchiello touched at the landing of a villa set amid

close-massed foliage high above the river. Gardens peopled with statues

descended from the portico of the villa to the marble platform on the

water's edge, where a throng of boatmen in the Procuratore's livery

hurried forward to receive the Marquess and his companions. The

comedians, sobered by the magnificence of their surroundings, followed

their leader like awe-struck children. Light and music streamed from the

long facade overhead, but the lower gardens lay hushed and dark, the air

fragrant with unseen flowers, the late moon just burnishing the edges of

the laurel-thickets from which, now and again, a nightingale's song

gushed in a fountain of sound. Odo, spellbound, followed the others

without a thought of his own share in the adventure. Never before had

beauty so ministered to every sense. He felt himself lost in his

surroundings, absorbed in the scent and murmur of the night.

3.3.

On the upper terrace a dozen lacqueys with wax lights hastened out to

receive the travellers. A laughing group followed, headed by a tall

vivacious woman covered with jewels, whom Odo guessed to be the

Procuratessa Bra. The Marquess, hastening forward, kissed the lady's

hand, and turned to summon the actors, who hung back at the farther end

of the terrace. The light from the windows and from the lacquey's tapers

fell full on the motley band, and Odo, roused to the singularity of his

position, was about to seek shelter behind the Pantaloon when he heard a

cry of recognition, and Mirandolina, darting out of the Procuratessa's

circle, fell at that lady's feet with a whispered word.

The Procuratessa at once advanced with a smile of surprise and bade the

Cavaliere Valsecca welcome. Seeing Odo's embarrassment, she added that

his Highness of Monte Alloro had already apprised her of the cavaliere's

coming, and that she and her husband had the day before despatched a

messenger to Venice to enquire if he were already there to invite him to

the villa. At the same moment a middle-aged man with an air of careless

kindly strength emerged from the house and greeted Odo.

"I am happy," said he bowing, "to receive at Bellocchio a member of the

princely house of Pianura; and your excellency will no doubt be as

well-pleased as ourselves that accident enables us to make acquaintance

without the formalities of an introduction."

This, then, was the famous Procuratore Bra, whose house had given three

Doges to Venice, and who was himself regarded as the most powerful if

not the most scrupulous noble of his day. Odo had heard many tales of

his singularities, for in a generation of elegant triflers his figure

stood out with the ruggedness of a granite boulder in a clipped and

gravelled garden. To hereditary wealth and influence he added a love of

power seconded by great political sagacity and an inflexible will. If

his means were not always above suspicion they at least tended to

statesmanlike ends, and in his public capacity he was faithful to the

highest interests of the state. Reports differed as to his private use

of his authority. He was noted for his lavish way of living, and for a

hospitality which distinguished him from the majority of his class, who,

however showy in their establishments, seldom received strangers, and

entertained each other only on the most ceremonious occasions. The

Procuratore kept open house both in Venice and on the Brenta, and in his

drawing-rooms the foreign traveller was welcomed as freely as in Paris

or London. Here, too, were to be met the wits, musicians and literati

whom a traditional morgue still excluded from many aristocratic houses.

Yet in spite of his hospitality (or perhaps because of it) the

Procuratore, as Odo knew, was the butt of the very poets he entertained,

and the worst satirised man in Venice. It was his misfortune to be in

love with his wife; and this state of mind (in itself sufficiently

ridiculous) and the shifts and compromises to which it reduced him, were

a source of endless amusement to the humorists. Nor were graver rumours

wanting; for it was known that the Procuratore, so proof against other

persuasions, was helpless in his wife's hands, and that honest men had

been undone and scoundrels exalted at a nod of the beautiful

Procuratessa. That lady, as famous in her way as her husband, was noted

for quite different qualities; so that, according to one satirist, her

hospitality began where his ended, and the Albergo Bra (the nickname

their palace went by) was advertised in the lampoons of the day as

furnishing both bed and board. In some respects, however, the tastes of

the noble couple agreed, both delighting in music, wit, good company,

and all the adornments of life; while, with regard to their private

conduct, it doubtless suffered by being viewed through the eyes of a

narrow and trivial nobility, apt to look with suspicion on any deviation

from the customs of their class. Such was the household in which Odo

found himself unexpectedly included. He learned that his hosts were in

the act of entertaining the English Duke who had captured his burchiello

that morning; and having exchanged his travelling-dress for a more

suitable toilet he was presently conducted to the private theatre where

the company had gathered to witness an improvised performance by

Mirandolina and the newly-arrived actors.

The Procuratessa at once beckoned him to the row of gilt armchairs where

she sat with the noble Duke and several ladies of distinction. The

little theatre sparkled with wax-lights reflected in the facets of glass

chandeliers and in the jewels of the richly-habited company, and Odo was

struck by the refined brilliancy of the scene. Before he had time to

look about him the curtains of the stage were drawn back, and

Mirandolina flashed into view, daring and radiant as ever, and dressed

with an elegance which spoke well for the liberality of her new

protector. She was as much at her ease as before the vulgar audience of

Vercelli, and spite of the distinguished eyes fixed upon her, her smiles

and sallies were pointedly addressed to Odo. This made him the object of

the Procuratessa's banter, but had an opposite effect on the Marquess,

who fixed him with an irritated eye and fidgeted restlessly in his seat

as the performance went on.

When the curtain fell the Procuratessa led the company to the circular

saloon which, as in most villas of the Venetian mainland, formed the

central point of the house. If Odo had been charmed by the graceful

decorations of the theatre, he was dazzled by the airy splendour of this

apartment. Dance-music was pouring from the arched recesses above the

doorways, and chandeliers of coloured Murano glass diffused a soft

brightness over the pilasters of the stuccoed walls, and the floor of

inlaid marbles on which couples were rapidly forming for the

contradance. His eye, however, was soon drawn from these to the ceiling

which overarched the dancers with what seemed like an Olympian revel

reflected in sunset clouds. Over the gilt balustrade surmounting the

cornice lolled the figures of fauns, bacchantes, nereids and tritons,

hovered over by a cloud of amorini blown like rose-leaves across a rosy

sky, while in the centre of the dome Apollo burst in his chariot through

the mists of dawn, escorted by a fantastic procession of the human

races. These alien subjects of the sun--a fur-clad Laplander, a turbaned

figure on a dromedary, a blackamoor and a plumed American Indian--were

in turn surrounded by a rout of Maenads and Silenuses, whose flushed

advance was checked by the breaking of cool green waves, through which

boys wreathed with coral and seaweed disported themselves among shoals

of flashing dolphins. It was as though the genius of Pleasure had poured

all the riches of his inexhaustible realm on the heads of the revellers

below.

The Procuratessa brought Odo to earth by remarking that it was a

master-piece of the divine Tiepolo he was admiring. She added that at

Bellocchio all formalities were dispensed with, and begged him to

observe that, in the rooms opening into the saloon, recreations were

provided for every taste. In one of these apartments silver trays were

set out with sherbets, cakes, and fruit cooled in snow, while in another

stood gaming-tables around which the greater number of the company were

already gathering for tresette. A third room was devoted to music; and

hither Mirandolina, who was evidently allowed a familiarity of

intercourse not accorded to the other comedians, had withdrawn with the

pacified Marquess, and perched on the arm of a high gilt chair was

pinching the strings of a guitar and humming the first notes of a

boatman's song...

After completing the circuit of the rooms Odo stepped out on the

terrace, which was now bathed in the whiteness of a soaring moon. The

colonnades detached against silver-misted foliage, the gardens

spectrally outspread, seemed to enclose him in a magic circle of

loveliness which the first ray of daylight must dispel. He wandered on,

drawn to the depths of shade on the lower terraces. The hush grew

deeper, the murmur of the river more mysterious. A yew-arbour invited

him and he seated himself on the bench niched in its inmost dusk. Seen

through the black arch of the arbour the moonlight lay like snow on

parterres and statues. He thought of Maria Clementina, and of the

delight she would have felt in such a scene as he had just left. Then

the remembrance of Mirandolina's blandishments stole over him and spite

of himself he smiled at the Marquess's discomfiture. Though he was in no

humour for an intrigue his fancy was not proof against the romance of

his surroundings, and it seemed to him that Miranda's eyes had never

been so bright or her smile so full of provocation. No wonder Frattanto

followed her like a lost soul and the Marquess abandoned Rome and

Baalbec to sit at the feet of such a teacher! Had not that light

philosopher after all chosen the true way and guessed the Sphinx's

riddle? Why should today always be jilted for tomorrow, sensation

sacrificed to thought?

As he sat revolving these questions the yew-branches seemed to stir, and

from some deeper recess of shade a figure stole to his side. He started,

but a hand was laid on his lips and he was gently forced back into his

seat. Dazzled by the outer moonlight he could just guess the outline of

the figure pressed against his own. He sat speechless, yielding to the

charm of the moment, till suddenly he felt a rapid kiss and the visitor

vanished as mysteriously as she had come. He sprang up to follow, but

inclination failed with his first step. Let the spell of mystery remain

unbroken! He sank down on the seat again lulled by dreamy musings...

When he looked up the moonlight had faded and he felt a chill in the

air. He walked out on the terrace. The moon hung low and the tree-tops

were beginning to tremble. The villa-front was grey, with oblongs of

yellow light marking the windows of the ball-room. As he looked up at

it, the dance-music ceased and not a sound was heard but the stir of the

foliage and the murmur of the river against its banks. Then, from a

loggia above the central portico, a woman's clear contralto notes took

flight:

Before the yellow dawn is up,

With pomp of shield and shaft,

Drink we of Night's fast-ebbing cup

One last delicious draught.

The shadowy wine of Night is sweet,

With subtle slumbrous fumes

Crushed by the Hours' melodious feet

From bloodless elder-blooms...

The days at Bellocchio passed in a series of festivities. The mornings

were spent in drinking chocolate, strolling in the gardens and visiting

the fish-ponds, meanders and other wonders of the villa; thence the

greater number of guests were soon drawn to the card-tables, from which

they rose only to dine; and after an elaborate dinner prepared by a

French cook the whole company set out to explore the country or to

exchange visits with the hosts of the adjoining villas. Each evening

brought some fresh diversion: a comedy or an operetta in the miniature

theatre, an al fresco banquet on the terrace or a ball attended by the

principal families of the neighbourhood. Odo soon contrived to reassure

the Marquess as to his designs upon Miranda, and when Coeur-Volant was

not at cards the two young men spent much of their time together. The

Marquess was never tired of extolling the taste and ingenuity with which

the Venetians planned and carried out their recreations. "Nature

herself," said he, "seems the accomplice of their merry-making, and in

no other surroundings could man's natural craving for diversion find so

graceful and poetic an expression."

The scene on which they looked out seemed to confirm his words. It was

the last evening of their stay at Bellocchio, and the Procuratessa had

planned a musical festival on the river. Festoons of coloured lanterns

wound from the portico to the water; and opposite the landing lay the

Procuratore's Bucentaur, a great barge hung with crimson velvet. In the

prow were stationed the comedians, in airy mythological dress, and as

the guests stepped on board they were received by Miranda, a rosy Venus

who, escorted by Mars and Adonis, recited an ode composed by Cantapresto

in the Procuratessa's honour. A banquet was spread in the deck-house,

which was hung with silk arras and Venetian mirrors, and, while the

guests feasted, dozens of little boats hung with lights and filled with

musicians flitted about the Bucentaur like a swarm of musical

fireflies...

The next day Odo accompanied the Procuratessa to Venice. Had he been a

traveller from beyond the Alps he could hardly have been more unprepared

for the spectacle that awaited him. In aspect and customs Venice

differed almost as much from other Italian cities as from those of the

rest of Europe. From the fanciful stone embroidery of her churches and

palaces to a hundred singularities in dress and manners--the

full-bottomed wigs and long gowns of the nobles, the black mantles and

head-draperies of the ladies, the white masks worn abroad by both sexes,

the publicity of social life under the arcades of the Piazza, the

extraordinary freedom of intercourse in the casini, gaming-rooms and

theatres--the city proclaimed, in every detail of life and architecture,

her independence of any tradition but her own. This was the more

singular as Saint Mark's square had for centuries been the meeting-place

of East and West, and the goal of artists, scholars and pleasure-seekers

from all parts of the world. Indeed, as Coeur-Volant pointed out, the

Venetian customs almost appeared to have been devised for the

convenience of strangers. The privilege of going masked at almost all

seasons and the enforced uniformity of dress, which in itself provided a

kind of incognito, made the place singularly favourable to every kind of

intrigue and amusement; while the mild temper of the people and the

watchfulness of the police prevented the public disorders that such

license might have occasioned. These seeming anomalies abounded on every

side. From the gaming-table where a tinker might set a ducat against a

prince it was but a few steps to the Broglio, or arcade under the ducal

palace, into which no plebeian might intrude while the nobility walked

there. The great ladies, who were subject to strict sumptuary laws, and

might not display their jewels or try the new French fashions but on the

sly, were yet privileged at all hours to go abroad alone in their

gondolas. No society was more haughty and exclusive in its traditions,

yet the mask leveled all classes and permitted, during the greater part

of the year, an equality of intercourse undreamed of in other cities;

while the nobles, though more magnificently housed than in any other

capital of Europe, generally sought amusement at the public casini or

assembly-rooms instead of receiving company in their own palaces. Such

were but a few of the contradictions in a city where the theatres were

named after the neighbouring churches, where there were innumerable

religious foundations but scarce an ecclesiastic to be met in company,

and where the ladies of the laity dressed like nuns, while the nuns in

the aristocratic convents went in gala habits and with uncovered heads.

No wonder that to the bewildered stranger the Venetians seemed to keep

perpetual carnival and Venice herself to be as it were the mere stage of

some huge comic interlude.

To Odo the setting was even more astonishing than the performance. Never

had he seen pleasure and grace so happily allied, all the arts of life

so combined in the single effort after enjoyment. Here was not a mere

tendency to linger on the surface, but the essence of superficiality

itself; not an ignoring of what lies beneath, but an elimination of it;

as though all human experience should be beaten thin and spread out

before the eye like some brilliant tenuous plaque of Etruscan gold. And

in this science of pleasure--mere jeweller's work though it were--the

greatest artists had collaborated, each contributing his page to the

philosophy of enjoyment in the form of some radiant allegory flowering

from palace wall or ceiling like the enlarged reflection of the life

beneath it. Nowhere was the mind arrested by a question or an idea.

Thought slunk away like an unmasked guest at the ridotto. Sensation

ruled supreme, and each moment was an iridescent bubble fresh-blown from

the lips of fancy.

Odo brought to the spectacle the humour best fitted for its enjoyment.

His weariness and discouragement sought refuge in the emotional

satisfaction of the hour. Here at least the old problem of living had

been solved, and from the patrician taking the air in his gondola to the

gondolier himself, gambling and singing on the water-steps of his

master's palace, all seemed equally satisfied with the solution. Now if

ever was the time to cry "halt!" to the present, to forget the travelled

road and take no thought for the morrow...

The months passed rapidly and agreeably. The Procuratessa was the most

amiable of guides, and in her company Odo enjoyed the best that Venice

had to offer, from the matchless music of the churches and hospitals to

the petits soupers in the private casini of the nobility; while

Coeur-Volant and Castelrovinato introduced him to scenes where even a

lady of the Procuratessa's intrepidity might not venture.

Such a life left little time for thoughtful pleasures; nor did Odo find

in the society about him any sympathy with his more personal tastes. At

first he yielded willingly enough to the pressure of his surroundings,

glad to escape from thoughts of the past and speculations about the

future; but it was impossible for him to lose his footing in such an

element, and at times he felt the lack of such companionship as de

Crucis had given him. There was no society in Venice corresponding with

the polished circles of Milan or Naples, or with the academic class in

such University towns as Padua and Pavia. The few Venetians destined to

be remembered among those who had contributed to the intellectual

advancement of Italy vegetated in obscurity, suffering not so much from

religious persecution--for the Inquisition had little power in

Venice--as from the incorrigible indifference of a society which ignored

all who did not contribute to its amusement. Odo indeed might have

sought out these unhonoured prophets, but that all the influences about

him set the other way, and that he was falling more and more into the

habit of running with the tide. Now and then, however, a vague ennui

drove him to one of the bookshops which, throughout Italy were the chief

meeting-places of students and authors. On one of these occasions the

dealer invited him into a private room where he kept some rare volumes,

and here Odo was surprised to meet Andreoni, the liberal bookseller of

Pianura.

Andreoni at first seemed somewhat disconcerted by the meeting; but

presently recovering his confidence, he told Odo that he had been

recently banished from Pianura, the cause of his banishment being the

publication of a book on taxation that was supposed to reflect on the

fiscal system of the duchy. Though he did not name the author, Odo at

once suspected Gamba; but on his enquiring if the latter had also been

banished, Andreoni merely replied that he had been dismissed from his

post, and had left Pianura. The bookseller went on to say that he had

come to Venice with the idea of setting up his press either there or in

Padua, where his wife's family lived. Odo was eager to hear more; but

Andreoni courteously declined to wait on him at his lodgings, on the

plea that it might harm them both to be seen together. They agreed,

however, to meet in San Zaccaria after low mass the next morning, and

here Andreoni gave Odo a fuller report of recent events in the duchy.

It appeared that in the incessant see-saw of party influences the Church

had once more gained on the liberals. Trescorre was out of favour, the

Dominican had begun to show his hand more openly, and the Duke, more

than ever apprehensive about his health, was seeking to conciliate

heaven by his renewed persecution of the reformers. In the general

upheaval even Crescenti had nearly lost his place; and it was rumoured

that he kept it only through the intervention of the Pope, who had

represented to the Duke that the persecution of a scholar already famous

throughout Europe would reflect little credit on the Church.

As for Gamba, Andreoni, though unwilling to admit a knowledge of his

exact whereabouts, assured Odo that he was well and had not lost

courage. At court matters remained much as usual. The Duchess,

surrounded by her familiars, had entered on a new phase of mad

expenditure, draining the exchequer to indulge her private whims,

filling her apartments with mountebanks and players, and borrowing from

courtiers and servants to keep her creditors from the door. Trescorre

was no longer able to check her extravagance, and his influence with the

Duke being on the wane, the court was once more the scene of unseemly

scandals and disorders.

The only new figure to appear there since Odo's departure was that of

the little prince's governor, who had come from Rome a few months

previously to superintend the heir's education, which was found to have

been grievously neglected under his former masters. This was an

ecclesiastic, an ex-Jesuit as some said, but without doubt a man of

parts, and apparently of more tolerant views than the other churchmen

about the court.

"But," Andreoni added, "your excellency may chance to recall him; for he

is the same abate de Crucis who was sent to Pianura by the Holy Office

to arrest the German astrologer."

Odo heard him with surprise. He had had no news of de Crucis since their

parting in Rome, where, as he supposed, the latter was to remain for

some years in the service of Prince Bracciano. Odo was at a loss to

conceive how or why the Jesuit had come to Pianura; but, whatever his

reasons for being there, it was certain that his influence must make

itself felt far beyond the range of his immediate duties. Whether this

influence would be exerted for good or ill it was impossible to

forecast; but much as Odo admired de Crucis, he could not forget that

the Jesuit, by his own avowal, was still the servant of the greatest

organised opposition to moral and intellectual freedom that the world

had ever known. That this opposition was not always actively manifested

Odo was well aware. He knew that the Jesuit spirit moved in many

directions and that its action was often more beneficial than that of

its opponents; but it remained an incalculable element in the

composition of human affairs, and one the more to be feared since, in

ceasing to have a material existence, it had acquired the dread

pervasiveness of an idea.

With the Epiphany the wild carnival-season set in. Nothing could surpass

the excesses of this mad time. All classes seemed bitten by the

tarantula of mirth, every gondola hid an intrigue, the patrician's

tabarro concealed a noble lady, the feminine hood and cloak a young

spark bent on mystification, the friar's habit a man of pleasure and the

nun's veil a lady of the town. The Piazza swarmed with merry-makers of

all degrees. The square itself was taken up by the booths of hucksters,

rope-dancers and astrologers, while promenaders in travesty thronged the

arcades, and the ladies of the nobility, in their white masks and black

zendaletti, surveyed the scene from the windows of the assembly-rooms in

the Procuratie, or, threading the crowd on the arms of their gallants,

visited the various peep-shows and flocked about the rhinoceros

exhibited in a great canvas tent in the Piazzetta. The characteristic

contrasts of Venetian life seemed to be emphasised by the vagaries of

the carnival, and Odo never ceased to be diverted by the sight of a long

line of masqueraders in every kind of comic disguise kneeling devoutly

before the brilliantly-lit shrine of the Virgin under the arches of the

Procuratie, while the friar who led their devotions interrupted his

litany whenever the quack on an adjoining platform began to bawl through

a tin trumpet the praise of his miraculous pills.

The mounting madness culminated on Giovedi Grasso, the last Thursday

before Lent, when the Piazzetta became the scene of ceremonies in which

the Doge himself took part. These opened with the decapitation of three

bulls: a rite said to commemorate some long-forgotten dispute between

the inveterate enemies, Venice and Aquileia. The bulls, preceded by

halberdiers and trumpeters, and surrounded by armed attendants, were led

in state before the ducal palace, and the executioner, practised in his

bloody work, struck off each head with a single stroke of his huge

sword. This slaughter was succeeded by pleasanter sights, such as the

famous Vola, or flight of a boy from the bell-tower of Saint Mark's to a

window of the palace, where he presented a nosegay to his Serenity and

was caught up again to his airy vaulting-ground. After this ingenious

feat came another called the "Force of Hercules," given by a band of

youths who, building themselves into a kind of pyramid, shifted their

postures with inexhaustible agility, while bursts of fireworks wove

yellow arches through the midday light. Meanwhile the crowds in the

streets fled this way and that as a throng of uproarious young fellows

drove before them the bulls that were to be baited in the open squares;

and wherever a recessed doorway or the angle of a building afforded

shelter from the rout, some posture-maker or ballad-singer had gathered

a crowd about his carpet.

Ash Wednesday brought about a dramatic transformation. Every travesty

laid aside, every tent and stall swept away, the people again gathered

in the Piazza to receive the ashes of penitence on their heads, the

churches now became the chief centres of interest. Venice was noted for

her sacred music and for the lavish illumination of her favourite

shrines and chapels; and few religious spectacles were more impressive

than the Forty Hours' devotion in the wealthier churches of the city.

All the magic of music, painting and sculpture were combined in the

service of religion, and Odo's sense of the dramatic quality of the

Catholic rites found gratification in the moving scenes where, amid the

imperishable splendours of his own creation, man owned himself but dust.

Never before had he been so alive to the symbolism of the penitential

season, so awed by the beauty and symmetry of that great structure of

the Liturgical Year that leads the soul up, step by step, to the awful

heights of Calvary. The very carelessness of those about him seemed to

deepen the solemnity of the scenes enacted--as though the Church, after

all her centuries of dominion, were still, as in those early days, but a

voice crying in the wilderness.

The Easter bells ushered in the reign of another spirit. If the carnival

folly was spent, the joy of returning life replaced it. After the winter

diversions of cards, concerts and theatres, came the excursions to the

island-gardens of the lagoon and the evening promenade of the fresca on

the Grand Canal. Now the palace-windows were hung with awnings, the

oleanders in the balconies grew rosy against the sea-worn marble, and

yellow snap-dragons blossomed from the crumbling walls. The market-boats

brought early fruits and vegetables from the Brenta and roses and

gilly-flowers from the Paduan gardens; and when the wind set from shore

it carried with it the scent of lime-blossoms and flowering fields. Now

also was the season when the great civic and religious processions took

place, dyeing the water with sunset hues as they swept from the steps of

the Piazzetta to San Giorgio, the Redentore or the Salute. In the

fashionable convents the nuns celebrated the festivals of their patron

saints with musical and dramatic entertainments to which secular

visitors were invited. These entertainments were a noted feature of

Venetian life, and the subject of much scandalous comment among visitors

from beyond the Alps. The nuns of the stricter orders were as closely

cloistered as elsewhere; but in the convents of Santa Croce, Santa

Chiara, and a few others, mostly filled by the daughters of the

nobility, an unusual liberty prevailed. It was known that the inmates

had taken the veil for family reasons, and to the indulgent Venetian

temper it seemed natural that their seclusion should be made as little

irksome as possible. As a rule the privileges accorded to the nuns

consisted merely in their being allowed to receive visits in the

presence of a lay-sister, and to perform in concerts on the feast-days

of the order; but some few convents had a name for far greater license,

and it was a common thing for the noble libertine returned from Italy to

boast of his intrigue with a Venetian nun.

Odo, in the Procuratessa's train, had of course visited many of the

principal convents. Whether it were owing to the malicious pleasure of

contrasting their own state with that of their cloistered sisters, or to

the discreet shelter which the parlour afforded to their private

intrigues, the Venetian ladies were exceedingly partial to these visits.

The Procuratessa was no exception to the rule, and as was natural to one

of her complexion, she preferred the convents where the greatest freedom

prevailed. Odo, however, had hitherto found little to tempt him in these

glimpses of forbidden fruit. The nuns, though often young and pretty,

had the insipidity of women secluded from the passions and sorrows of

life without being raised above them; and he preferred the frank

coarseness of the Procuratessa's circle to the simpering graces of the

cloister.

Even Coeur-Volant's mysterious boast of a conquest he had made among the

sisters failed to excite his friend's curiosity. The Marquess, though

still devoted to Miranda, was too much the child of his race not to seek

variety in his emotions; indeed he often declared that the one fault of

the Italian character was its unimaginative fidelity in love-affairs.

"Does a man," he asked, "dine off one dish at a gourmet's banquet? And

why should I restrict myself to one course at the most richly-spread

table in Europe? One must love at least two women to appreciate either;

and, did the silly creatures but know it, a rival becomes them like a

patch."

Sister Mary of the Crucifix, he went on to explain, possessed the very

qualities that Miranda lacked. The daughter of a rich nobleman of

Treviso, she was skilled in music, drawing and all the operations of the

needle, and was early promised in marriage to a young man whose estates

adjoined her father's. The jealousy of a younger sister, who was

secretly in love with the suitor, caused her to accuse Coeur-Volant's

mistress of misconduct and thus broke off the marriage; and the unhappy

girl, repudiated by her bridegroom, was at once despatched to a convent

in Venice. Enraged at her fate, she had repeatedly appealed to the

authorities to release her; but her father's wealth and influence

prevailed against all her efforts. The abbess, however, felt such pity

for her that she was allowed more freedom than the other nuns, with whom

her wit and beauty made her a favourite in spite of her exceptional

privileges. These, as Coeur-Volant hinted, included the liberty of

leaving the convent after night-fall to visit her friends; and he

professed to be one of those whom she had thus honoured. Always eager to

have his good taste ratified by the envy of his friends, he was urgent

with Odo to make the lady's acquaintance, and it was agreed that, on the

first favourable occasion, a meeting should take place at Coeur-Volant's

casino. The weeks elapsed, however, without Odo's hearing further of the

matter, and it had nearly passed from his mind when one August day he

received word that the Marquess hoped for his company that evening.

He was in that mood of careless acquiescence when any novelty invites,

and the heavy warmth of the summer night seemed the accomplice of his

humour. Cloaked and masked, he stepped into his gondola and was swept

rapidly along the Grand Canal and through winding channels to the

Giudecca. It was close on midnight and all Venice was abroad. Gondolas

laden with musicians and hung with coloured lamps lay beneath the palace

windows or drifted out on the oily reaches of the lagoon. There was no

moon, and the side-canals were dark and noiseless but for the hundreds

of caged nightingales that made every byway musical. As his prow slipped

past garden walls and under the blackness of low-ached bridges Odo felt

the fathomless mystery of the Venetian night: not the open night of the

lagoons, but the secret dusk of nameless waterways between blind windows

and complaisant gates.

At one of these his gondola presently touched. The gate was cautiously

unbarred and Odo found himself in a strip of garden preceding a low

pavilion in which not a light was visible. A woman-servant led him

indoors and the Marquess greeted him on the threshold.

"You are late!" he exclaimed. "I began to fear you would not be here to

receive our guests with me."

"Your guests?" Odo repeated. "I had fancied there was but one."

The Marquess smiled. "My dear Mary of the Crucifix," he said, "is too

well-born to venture out alone at this late hour, and has prevailed on

her bosom friend to accompany her.--Besides," he added with his

deprecating shrug, "I own I have had too recent an experience of your

success to trust you alone with my enchantress; and she has promised to

bring the most fascinating nun in the convent to protect her from your

wiles."

As he spoke he led Odo into a room furnished in the luxurious style of a

French boudoir. A Savonnerie carpet covered the floor, the lounges and

easy-chairs were heaped with cushions, and the panels hung with pastel

drawings of a lively or sentimental character. The windows toward the

garden were close-shuttered, but those on the farther side of the room

stood open on a starlit terrace whence the eye looked out over the

lagoon to the outer line of islands.

"Confess," cried Coeur-Volant, pointing to a table set with delicacies

and flanked by silver wine-coolers, "that I have spared no pains to do

my goddess honour and that this interior must present an agreeable

contrast to the whitewashed cells and dismal refectory of her convent!

No passion," he continued, with his quaint didactic air, "is so

susceptible as love to the influence of its surroundings; and principles

which might have held out against a horse-hair sofa and soupe a l'oignon

have before now been known to succumb to silk cushions and champagne."

He received with perfect good-humour the retort that if he failed in his

designs his cook and his upholsterer would not be to blame; and the

young men were still engaged in such banter when the servant returned to

say that a gondola was at the water-gate. The Marquess hastened out and

presently reappeared with two masked and hooded figures. The first of

these, whom he led by the hand, entered with the air of one not

unaccustomed to her surroundings; but the other hung back, and on the

Marquess's inviting them to unmask, hurriedly signed to her friend to

refuse.

"Very well, fair strangers," said Coeur-Volant with a laugh; "if you

insist on prolonging our suspense we shall avenge ourselves by

prolonging yours, and neither my friend nor I will unmask till you are

pleased to set us the example."

The first lady echoed his laugh. "Shall I own," she cried, "that I

suspect in this unflattering compliance a pretext to conceal your

friend's features from me as long as possible? For my part," she

continued, throwing back her hood, "the mask of hypocrisy I am compelled

to wear in the convent makes me hate every form of disguise, and with

all my defects I prefer to be known as I am." And with that she detached

her mask and dropped the cloak from her shoulders.

The gesture revealed a beauty of the laughing sensuous type best suited

to such surroundings. Sister Mary of the Crucifix, in her sumptuous gown

of shot-silk, with pearls wound through her reddish hair and hanging on

her bare shoulders, might have stepped from some festal canvas of

Bonifazio's. She had laid aside even the light gauze veil worn by the

nuns in gala habit, and no vestige of her calling showed itself in dress

or bearing.

"Do you accept my challenge, cavaliere?" she exclaimed, turning on Odo a

glance confident of victory.

The Marquess meanwhile had approached the other nun with the intention

of inducing her to unmask; but as Sister Mary of the Crucifix advanced

to perform the same service for his friend, his irrepressible jealousy

made him step hastily between them.

"Come cavaliere," he cried, drawing Odo gaily toward the unknown nun,

"since you have induced one of our fair guests to unmask perhaps you may

be equally successful with the other, who appears provokingly

indifferent to my advances."

The masked nun had in fact retreated to a corner of the room and stood

there, drawing her cloak about her, rather in the attitude of a

frightened child than in that of a lady bent on a gallant adventure.

Sister Mary of the Crucifix approached her playfully. "My dear Sister

Veronica," said she, throwing her arm about the other's neck, "hesitates

to reveal charms which she knows must cast mine in the shade; but I am

not to be outdone in generosity, and if the Marquess will unmask his

friend I will do the same by mine."

As she spoke she deftly pinioned the nun's hands and snatched off her

mask with a malicious laugh. The Marquess, entering into her humour,

removed Odo's at the same instant, and the latter, turning with a laugh,

found himself face to face with Fulvia Vivaldi. He grew white, and Mary

of the Crucifix sprang forward to catch her friend.

"Good God! What is this?" gasped the Marquess, staring from one to the

other.

A glance of entreaty from Fulvia checked the answer on Odo's lips, and

for a moment there was silence in the room; then Fulvia, breaking away

from her companion, fled out on the terrace. The other was about to

follow; but Odo, controlling himself, stepped between them.

"Madam," said he in a low voice, "I recognise in your companion a friend

of whom I have long had no word. Will you pardon me if I speak with her

alone?"

Sister Mary drew back with a meaning sparkle in her handsome eyes. "Why,

this," she cried, not without a touch of resentment, "is the prettiest

ending imaginable; but what a sly creature, to be sure, to make me think

it was her first assignation!"

Odo, without answering, hastened out on the terrace. It was so dark

after the brightly lit room that for a moment he did not distinguish the

figure which had sprung to the low parapet above the water; and he

stumbled forward just in time to snatch Fulvia back to safety.

"This is madness!" he cried, as she hung upon him trembling.

"The boat," she stammered in a strange sobbing voice--"the boat should

be somewhere below--"

"The boat lies at the water-gate on the other side," he answered.

She drew away from him with a gesture of despair. The struggle with

Sister Mary had disordered her hair and it fell on her white neck in

loosened strands. "My cloak--my mask--" she faltered vaguely, clasping

her hands across her bosom; then suddenly dropped to a seat and burst

into tears. Once before--but in how different a case!--he had seen her

thus thrilled with weeping. Then fate had thrown him humbled at her

feet, now it was she who cried him mercy in every line of her bowed head

and shaken breast; and the thought of that other meeting flooded his

heart with pity.

He knelt before her, seeking her hands. "Fulvia, why do you shrink from

me?" he whispered. But she shook her head and wept on.

At last her sobs subsided and she rose to her feet. "I must go back,"

said she in a low tone, and would have passed him.

"Back? To the convent?"

"To the convent," she said after him; but she made no farther effort to

move.

The question that tortured him sprang forth. "You have taken the vows?"

"A month since," she answered.

He hid his face in his hands and for a moment both were silent. "And you

have no other word for me--none?" he faltered at last.

She fixed him with a hard bright stare. "Yes--one," she cried; "keep a

place for me among your gallant recollections."

"Fulvia!" he said with sudden strength, and caught her by the arm.

"Let me pass!" she cried.

"No, by heaven!" he retorted; "not till you listen to me--not till you

tell me how it is that I come upon you here!--Ah, child," he broke out,

"do you fancy I don't see how little you belong in such scenes? That I

don't know you are here through some dreadful error? Fulvia," he

pleaded, "will you never trust me?" And at the word he burned with

blushes in the darkness.

His voice, perhaps, rather than what he said, seemed to have struck a

yielding fibre. He felt her arm tremble in his hold; but after a moment

she said with cruel distinctness: "There was no error. I came knowingly.

It was the company and not the place I was deceived in."