The next morning, to his surprise, the Duchess sent one of her gentlemen

to ask an audience. Odo at once replied that he would wait on her

Highness; and a few moments later he was ushered into his wife's closet.

She had just left her toilet, and was still in the morning negligee worn

during that prolonged and public ceremonial. Freshly perfumed and

powdered, her eyes bright, her lips set in a nervous smile, she

curiously recalled the arrogant child who had snatched her spaniel away

from him years ago in that same room. And was she not that child, after

all? Had she ever grown beyond the imperious instincts of her youth? It

seemed to him now that he had judged her harshly in the first months of

their marriage. He had felt a momentary impatience when he had tried to

force her roving impulses into the line of his own endeavour: it was

easier to view her leniently now that she had almost passed out of his

life.

He wondered why she had sent for him. Some dispute with her household,

doubtless; a quarrel with a servant, even--or perhaps some sordid

difficulty with her creditors. But she began in a new key.

"Your Highness," she said, "is not given to taking my advice."

Odo looked at her in surprise. "The opportunity is not often accorded

me," he replied with a smile.

Maria Clementina made an impatient gesture; then her face softened.

Contradictory emotions flitted over it like the reflections cast by a

hurrying sky. She came close to him and then drew away and seated

herself in the high-backed chair where she had throned when he first saw

her. Suddenly she blushed and began to speak.

"Once," she said in a low, almost inaudible voice, "I was able to give

your Highness warning of an impending danger--" She paused and her eyes

rested full on Odo.

He felt his colour rise as he returned her gaze. It was her first

allusion to the past. He had supposed she had forgotten. For a moment he

remained awkwardly silent.

"Do you remember?" she asked.

"I remember."

"The danger was a grave one. Your Highness may recall that but for my

warning you would not have been advised of it."

"I remember," he said again.

She paused a moment. "The danger," she repeated, "was a grave one; but

it threatened only your Highness's person. Your Highness listened to me

then; will you listen again if I advise you of a greater--a peril

threatening not only your person but your throne?"

Odo smiled. He could guess now what was coming. She had been drilled to

act as the mouthpiece of the opposition. He composed his features and

said quietly: "These are grave words, madam. I know of no such

peril--but I am always ready to listen to your Highness."

His smile had betrayed him, and a quick flame of anger passed over her

face.

"Why should you listen to me, since you never heed what I say?"

"Your Highness has just reminded me that I did so once--"

"Once!" she repeated bitterly. "You were younger then--and so was I!"

She glanced at herself in the mirror with a dissatisfied laugh.

Something in her look and movement touched the springs of compassion.

"Try me again," he said gently. "If I am older, perhaps I am also wiser,

and therefore even more willing to be guided--we all knew that." She

broke off, as though she felt her mistake and wished to make a fresh

beginning. Again her face was full of fluctuating meaning; and he saw,

beneath its shallow surface, the eddy of incoherent impulses. When she

spoke, it was with a noble gravity.

"Your Highness," she said, "does not take me into your counsels; but it

is no secret at court and in the town that you have in contemplation a

grave political measure."

"I have made no secret of it," he replied.

"No--or I should be the last to know it!" she exclaimed, with one of her

sudden lapses into petulance.

Odo made no reply. Her futility was beginning to weary him. She saw it

and again attempted an impersonal dignity of manner.

"It has been your Highness's choice," she said, "to exclude me from

public affairs. Perhaps I was not fitted by education or intelligence to

share in the cares of government. Your Highness will at least bear

witness that I have scrupulously respected your decision, and have never

attempted to intrude upon your counsels."

Odo bowed. It would have been useless to remind her that he had sought

her help and failed to obtain it.

"I have accepted my position," she continued. "I have led the life to

which it has pleased your Highness to restrict me. But I have not been

able to detach my heart as well as my thoughts from your Highness's

interests. I have not learned to be indifferent to your danger."

Odo looked up quickly. She ceased to interest him when she spoke by the

book, and he was impatient to make an end.

"You spoke of danger before," he said. "What danger?"

"That of forcing on your subjects liberties which they do not desire!"

"Ah," said he thoughtfully. That was all, then. What a poor tool she

made! He marvelled that, in all these years, Trescorre's skilful hands

should not have fashioned her to better purpose.

"Your Highness," he said, "has reminded me that since our marriage you

had lived withdrawn from public affairs. I will not pause to dispute by

whose choice this has been; I will in turn merely remind your Highness

that such a life does not afford much opportunity of gauging public

opinion."

In spite of himself a note of sarcasm had again crept into his voice;

but to his surprise she did not seem to resent it.

"Ah," she exclaimed, with more feeling than she had hitherto shown, "you

fancy that, because I am kept in ignorance of what you think, I am

ignorant also of what others think of you! Believe me," she said, with a

flash of insight that startled him, "I know more of you than if we stood

closer. But you mistake my purpose. I have not sent for you to force my

counsels on you. I have no desire to appear ridiculous. I do not ask you

to hear what _I_ think of your course, but what others think of it."

"What others?"

The question did not disconcert her. "Your subjects," she said quickly.

"My subjects are of many classes."

"All are of one class in resenting this charter. I am told you intend to

proclaim it within a few days. I entreat you at least to delay, to

reconsider your course. Oh, believe me when I say you are in danger! Of

what use to offer a crown to our Lady, when you have it in your heart to

slight her servants? But I will not speak of the clergy, since you

despise them--nor of the nobles, since you ignore their claims. I will

speak only of the people--the people, in whose interest you profess to

act. Believe me, in striking at the Church you wound the poor. It is not

their bodily welfare I mean--though Heaven knows how many sources of

bounty must now run dry! It is their faith you insult. First you turn

them against their masters, then against their God. They may acclaim you

for it now--but I tell you they will hate you for it in the end!"

She paused, flushed with the vehemence of her argument, and eager to

press it farther. But her last words had touched an unexpected fibre in

Odo. He looked at her with his unseeing visionary gaze.

"The end?" he murmured. "Who knows what the end will be?"

"Do you still need to be told?" she exclaimed. "Must you always come to

me to learn that you are in danger?"

"If the state is in danger the danger must be faced. The state exists

for the people; if they do not need it, it has ceased to serve its

purpose."

She clasped her hands in an ecstasy of wonder. "Oh, fool, madman--but it

is not of the state I speak! It is you who are in

danger--you--you--you--"

He raised his head with an impatient gesture.

"I?" he said. "I had thought you meant a graver peril."

She looked at him in silence. Her pride met his and thrilled with it;

and for a moment the two were one.

"Odo!" she cried. She sank into a chair, and he went to her and took her

hand.

"Such fears are worthy neither of us," he said gravely.

"I am not ashamed of them," she said. Her hand clung to him and she

lifted her eyes to his face. "You will listen to me?" she whispered in a

glow.

He drew back chilled. If only she had kept the feminine in abeyance! But

sex was her only weapon.

"I have listened," he said quietly. "And I thank you."

"But you will not be counselled?"

"In the last issue one must be one's own counsellor."

Her face flamed. "If you were but that!" she tossed back at him.

The taunt struck him full. He knew that he should have let it lie; but

he caught it up in spite of himself.

"Madam!" he said.

"I should have appealed to our sovereign, not to her servant!" she

cried, dashing into the breach she had made.

He stood motionless, stunned almost. For what she had said was true. He

was no longer the sovereign: the rule had passed out of his hands.

His silence frightened her. With an instinctive jealousy she saw that

her words had started a train of thought in which she had no part. She

felt herself ignored, abandoned; and all her passions rushed to the

defence of her wounded vanity.

"Oh, believe me," she cried, "I speak as your Duchess, not as your wife.

That is a name in which I should never dream of appealing to you. I have

ever stood apart from your private pleasures, as became a woman of my

house." She faced him with a flash of the Austrian insolence. "But when

I see the state drifting to ruin as the result of your caprice, when I

see your own life endangered, your people turned against you, religion

openly insulted, law and authority made the plaything of

this--this--false atheistical creature, that has robbed me--robbed me of

all--" She broke off helplessly and hid her face with a sob.

Odo stood speechless, spell-bound. He could not mistake what had

happened. The woman had surged to the surface at last--the real woman,

passionate, self-centred, undisciplined, but so piteous, after all, in

this sudden subjection to the one tenderness that survived in her. She

loved him and was jealous of her rival. That was the instinct which had

swept all others aside. At that moment she cared nothing for her safety

or his. The state might perish if they but fell together. It was the

distance between them that maddened her.

The tragic simplicity of the revelation left Odo silent. For a fantastic

moment he yielded to the vision of what that waste power might have

accomplished. Life seemed to him a confusion of roving force that met

only to crash in ruins.

His silence drew her to her feet. She repossessed herself, throbbing but

valiant.

"My fears for your Highness's safety have led my speech astray. I have

given your Highness the warning it was my duty to give. Beyond that I

had no thought of trespassing."

And still Odo was silent. A dozen answers struggled to his lips; but

they were checked by the stealing sense of duality that so often

paralysed his action. He had recovered his lucidity of vision, and his

impulses faded before it like mist. He saw life again as it was, an

incomplete and shabby business, a patchwork of torn and ravelled effort.

Everywhere the shears of Atropos were busy, and never could the cut

threads be joined again.

He took his wife's hand and bent over it ceremoniously. It lay in his

like a stone.

4.8.

The jubilee of the Mountain Madonna fell on the feast of the

Purification. It was mid-November, but with a sky of June. The autumn

rains had ceased for the moment, and fields and orchards glistened with

a late verdure.

Never had the faithful gathered in such numbers to do honour to the

wonder-working Virgin. A widespread resistance to the influences of free

thought and Jansenism was pouring fresh life into the old formulas of

devotion. Though many motives combined to strengthen this movement, it

was still mainly a simple expression of loyalty to old ideals, an

instinctive rallying around a threatened cause. It is the honest

conviction underlying all great popular impulses that gives them their

real strength; and in this case the thousands of pilgrims flocking on

foot to the mountain shrine embodied a greater moral force than the

powerful ecclesiastics at whose call they had gathered.

The clergy themselves were come from all sides; while those that were

unable to attend had sent costly gifts to the miraculous Virgin. The

Bishops of Mantua, Modena, Vercelli and Cremona had travelled to Pianura

in state, the people flocking out beyond the gates to welcome them. Four

mitred Abbots, several Monsignori, and Priors, Rectors, Vicars-general

and canons innumerable rode in the procession, followed on foot by the

humble army of parish priests and by interminable confraternities of all

orders.

The approach of the great dignitaries was hailed with enthusiasm by the

crowds lining the roads. Even the Bishop of Pianura, never popular with

the people, received an unwonted measure of applause, and the

white-cowled Prior of the Dominicans, riding by stern and close-lipped

as a monk of Zurbaran's, was greeted with frenzied acclamations. The

report that the Bishop and the heads of the religious houses in Pianura

were to set free suppers for the pilgrims had doubtless quickened this

outburst of piety; yet it was perhaps chiefly due to the sense of coming

peril that had gradually permeated the dim consciousness of the crowd.

In the church, the glow of lights, the thrilling beauty of the music and

the glitter of the priestly vestments were blent in a melting harmony of

sound and colour. The shrine of the Madonna shone with unearthly

radiance. Hundreds of candles formed an elongated nimbus about her

hieratic figure, which was surmounted by the canopy of cloth-of-gold

presented by the Duke of Modena. The Bishops of Vercelli and Cremona had

offered a robe of silver brocade studded with coral and turquoises, the

devout Princess Clotilda of Savoy an emerald necklace, the Bishop of

Pianura a marvellous veil of rose-point made in a Flemish convent; while

on the statue's brow rested the Duke's jewelled diadem.

The Duke himself, seated in his tribune above the choir, observed the

scene with a renewed appreciation of the Church's unfailing dramatic

instinct. At first he saw in the spectacle only this outer and symbolic

side, of which the mere sensuous beauty had always deeply moved him; but

as he watched the effect produced on the great throng filling the

aisles, he began to see that this external splendour was but the veil

before the sanctuary, and to realise what de Crucis meant when he spoke

of the deep hold of the Church upon the people. Every colour, every

gesture, every word and note of music that made up the texture of the

gorgeous ceremonial might indeed seem part of a long-studied and

astutely-planned effect. Yet each had its root in some instinct of the

heart, some natural development of the inner life, so that they were in

fact not the cunningly-adjusted fragments of an arbitrary pattern but

the inseparable fibres of a living organism. It was Odo's misfortune to

see too far ahead on the road along which his destiny was urging him. As

he sat there, face to face with the people he was trying to lead, he

heard above the music of the mass and the chant of the kneeling throng

an echo of the question that Don Gervaso had once put to him:--"If you

take Christ from the people, what have you to give them instead?"

He was roused by a burst of silver clarions. The mass was over, and the

Duke and Duchess were to descend from their tribune and venerate the

holy image before it was carried through the church.

Odo rose and gave his hand to his wife. They had not seen each other,

save in public, since their last conversation in her closet. The Duchess

walked with set lips and head erect, keeping her profile turned to him

as they descended the steps and advanced to the choir. None knew better

how to take her part in such a pageant. She had the gift of drawing upon

herself the undivided attention of any assemblage in which she moved;

and the consciousness of this power lent a kind of Olympian buoyancy to

her gait. The richness of her dress and her extravagant display of

jewels seemed almost a challenge to the sacred image blazing like a

rainbow beneath its golden canopy; and Odo smiled to think that his

childish fancy had once compared the brilliant being at his side to the

humble tinsel-decked Virgin of the church at Pontesordo.

As the couple advanced, stillness fell on the church. The air was full

of the lingering haze of incense, through which the sunlight from the

clerestory poured in prismatic splendours on the statue of the Virgin.

Rigid, superhuman, a molten flamboyancy of gold and gems, the

wonder-working Madonna shone out above her worshippers. The Duke and

Duchess paused, bowing deeply, below the choir. Then they mounted the

steps and knelt before the shrine. As they did so a crash broke the

silence, and the startled devotees saw that the ducal diadem had fallen

from the Madonna's head.

The hush prolonged itself a moment; then a canon sprang forward to pick

up the crown, and with the movement a murmur rose and spread through the

church. The Duke's offering had fallen to the ground as he approached to

venerate the blessed image. That this was an omen no man could doubt. It

needed no augur to interpret it. The murmur, gathering force as it swept

through the packed aisles, passed from surprise to fear, from fear to a

deep hum of anger;--for the people understood, as plainly as though she

had spoken, that the Virgin of the Valseccas had cast from her the gift

of an unbeliever...

* * * * *

The ceremonies over, the long procession was formed again and set out

toward the city. The crowd had surged ahead, and when the Duke rode

through the gates the streets were already thronged. Moving slowly

between the compact mass of people he felt himself as closely observed

as on the day of his state entry; but with far different effect.

Enthusiasm had given way to a cold curiosity. The excitement of the

spectators had spent itself in the morning, and the sight of their

sovereign failed to rouse their flagging ardour. Now and then a cheer

broke out, but it died again without kindling another in the

uninflammable mass. Odo could not tell how much of this indifference was

due to a natural reaction from the emotions of the morning, how much to

his personal unpopularity, how much to the ominous impression produced

by the falling of the Virgin's crown. He rode between his people

oppressed by a sense of estrangement such as he had never known. He felt

himself shut off from them by an impassable barrier of superstition and

ignorance; and every effort to reach them was like the wrong turn in a

labyrinth, drawing him farther away from the issue to which it seemed to

lead.

As he advanced under this indifferent or hostile scrutiny, he thought

how much easier it would be to face a rain of bullets than this

withering glare of criticism. A sudden longing to escape, to be done

with it all, came over him with sickening force. His nerves ached with

the physical strain of holding himself upright on his horse, of

preserving the statuesque erectness proper to the occasion. He felt like

one of his own ancestral effigies, of which the wooden framework had

rotted under the splendid robes. A congestion at the head of a narrow

street had checked the procession, and he was obliged to rein in his

horse. He looked about and found himself in the centre of the square

near the Baptistery. A few feet off, directly in a line with him, was

the weather-worn front of the Royal Printing-Press. He raised his head

and saw a group of people on the balcony. Though they were close at

hand, he saw them in a blur, against which Fulvia's figure suddenly

detached itself. She had told him that she was to view the procession

with the Andreonis; but through the mental haze which enveloped him her

apparition struck a vague surprise. He looked at her intently, and their

eyes met. A faint happiness stole over her face, but no recognition was

possible, and she continued to gaze out steadily upon the throng below

the balcony. Involuntarily his glance followed hers, and he saw that she

was herself the centre of the crowd's attention. Her plain, almost

Quakerish habit, and the tranquil dignity of her carriage, made her a

conspicuous figure among the animated groups in the adjoining windows,

and Odo, with the acuteness of perception which a public life develops,

was instantly aware that her name was on every lip. At the same moment

he saw a woman close to his horse's feet snatch up her child and make

the sign against the evil eye. A boy who stood staring open-mouthed at

Fulvia caught the gesture and repeated it; a barefoot friar imitated the

boy, and it seemed to Odo that the familiar sign was spreading with

malignant rapidity to the furthest limits of the crowd. The impression

was only momentary; for the cavalcade was again in motion, and without

raising his eyes he rode on, sick at heart...

* * * * *

At nightfall a man opened the gate of the ducal gardens below the

Chinese pavilion and stepped out into the deserted lane. He locked the

gate and slipped the key into his pocket; then he turned and walked

toward the centre of the town. As he reached the more populous quarters

his walk slackened to a stroll; and now and then he paused to observe a

knot of merry-makers or look through the curtains of the tents set up in

the squares.

The man was plainly but decently dressed, like a petty tradesman or a

lawyer's clerk, and the night being chill he wore a cloak, and had drawn

his hat-brim over his forehead. He sauntered on, letting the crowd carry

him, with the air of one who has an hour to kill, and whose

holiday-making takes the form of an amused spectatorship. To such an

observer the streets offered ample entertainment. The shrewd air

discouraged lounging and kept the crowd in motion; but the open

platforms built for dancing were thronged with couples, and every

peep-show, wine-shop and astrologer's booth was packed to the doors. The

shrines and street-lamps being all alight, and booths and platforms hung

with countless lanterns, the scene was as bright as day; but in the

ever-shifting medley of peasant-dresses, liveries, monkish cowls and

carnival disguises, a soberly-clad man might easily go unremarked.

Reaching the square before the Cathedral, the solitary observer pushed

his way through the idlers gathered about a dais with a curtain at the

back. Before the curtain stood a Milanese quack, dressed like a noble

gentleman, with sword and plumed hat, and rehearsing his cures in

stentorian tones, while his zany, in the short mask and green-and-white

habit of Brighella, cracked jokes and turned hand-springs for the

diversion of the vulgar.

"Behold," the charlatan was shouting, "the marvellous Egyptian

love-philter distilled from the pearl that the great Emperor Antony

dropped into Queen Cleopatra's cup. This infallible fluid, handed down

for generations in the family of my ancestor, the High Priest of Isis--"

The bray of a neighbouring show-man's trumpet cut him short, and

yielding to circumstances he drew back the curtain, and a tumbling-girl

sprang out and began her antics on the front of the stage.

"What did he say was the price of that drink, Giannina?" asked a young

maid-servant pulling her neighbour's sleeve.

"Are you thinking of buying it for Pietrino, my beauty?" the other

returned with a laugh. "Believe me, it is a sound proverb that says:

When the fruit is ripe it falls of itself."

The girl drew away angrily, and the quack took up his harangue:--"The

same philter, ladies and gentlemen--though in confessing it I betray a

professional secret--the same philter, I declare to you on the honour of

a nobleman, whereby, in your own city, a lady no longer young and no way

remarkable in looks or station, has captured and subjugated the

affections of one so high, so exalted, so above all others in beauty,

rank, wealth, power and dignities--"

"Oh, oh, that's the Duke!" sniggered a voice in the crowd.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I name no names!" cried the quack impressively.

"No need to," retorted the voice.

"They do say, though, she gave him something to drink," said a young

woman to a youth in a clerk's dress. "The saying is she studied medicine

with the Turks."

"The Moors, you mean," said the clerk with an air of superiority.

"Well, they say her mother was a Turkey slave and her father a murderer

from the Sultan's galleys."

"No, no, she's plain Piedmontese, I tell you. Her father was a physician

in Turin, and was driven out of the country for poisoning his patients

in order to watch their death-agonies."

"They say she's good to the poor, though," said another voice

doubtfully.

"Good to the poor? Ay, that's what they said of her father. All I know

is that she heard Stefano the weaver's lad had the falling sickness, and

she carried him a potion with her own hands, and the next day the child

was dead, and a Carmelite friar, who saw the phial he drank from, said

it was the same shape and size as one that was found in a witch's grave

when they were digging the foundations for the new monastery."

"Ladies and gentlemen," shrieked the quack, "what am I offered for a

drop of this priceless liquor?"

The listener turned aside and pushed his way toward the farther end of

the square. As he did so he ran against a merry-andrew who thrust a long

printed sheet in his hand.

"Buy my satirical ballads, ladies and gentlemen!" the fellow shouted.

"Two for a farthing, invented and written by an own cousin of the great

Pasquino of Rome! What will you have, sir? Here's the secret history of

a famous Prince's amours with an atheist--here's the true scandal of an

illustrious lady's necklace--two for a farthing...and my humblest thanks

to your excellency." He pocketed the coin, and the other, thrusting the

broadsheets beneath his cloak, pushed on to the nearest coffee-house.

Here every table was thronged, and the babble of talk so loud that the

stranger, hopeless of obtaining refreshment, pressed his way into the

remotest corner of the room and seated himself on an empty cask. At

first he sat motionless, silently observing the crowd; then he drew

forth the ballads and ran his eye over them. He was still engaged in

this study when his notice was attracted by a loud discussion going

forward between a party of men at the nearest table. The disputants,

petty tradesman or artisans by their dress, had evidently been warmed by

a good flagon of wine, and their tones were so lively that every word

reached the listener on the cask.

"Reform, reform!" cried one, who appeared by his dress and manner to be

the weightiest of the company--"it's all very well to cry reform; but

what I say is that most of those that are howling for it no more know

what they're asking than a parrot that's been taught the litany. Now the

first question is: who benefits by your reform? And what's the answer to

that, eh? Is it the tradesmen? The merchants? The clerks, artisans,

household servants, I ask you? I hear some of my fellow-tradesmen

complaining that the nobility don't pay their bills. Will they be better

paid, think you, when the Duke has halved their revenues? Will the

quality keep up as large households, employ as many lacqueys, set as

lavish tables, wear as fine clothes, collect as many rarities, buy as

many horses, give us, in short, as many opportunities of making our

profit out of their pleasure? What I say is, if we're to have new taxes,

don't let them fall on the very class we live by!"

"That's true enough," said another speaker, a lean bilious man with a

pen behind his ear. "The peasantry are the only class that are going to

profit by this constitution."

"And what do the peasantry do for us, I should like to know?" the first

speaker went on triumphantly. "As far as the fat friars go, I'm not

sorry to see them squeezed a trifle, for they've wrung enough money out

of our women-folk to lie between feathers from now till doomsday; but I

say, if you care for your pockets, don't lay hands on the nobility!"

"Gently, gently, my friend," exclaimed a cautious flaccid-looking man

setting down his glass. "Father and son, for four generations, my family

have served Pianura with Church candles, and I can tell you that since

these new atheistical notions came in, the nobility are not the good

patrons they used to be. But as for the friars, I should be sorry to see

them meddled with. It's true they may get the best morsel in the pot and

the warmest seat on the hearth--and one of them, now and then, may take

too long to teach a pretty girl her Pater Noster--but I'm not sure we

shall be better off when they're gone. Formerly, if a child too many

came to poor folk they could always comfort themselves with the thought

that, if there was no room for him at home, the Church was there to

provide for him. But if we drive out the good friars, a man will have to

count mouths before he dares look at his wife too lovingly."

"Well," said the scribe with a dry smile, "I've a notion the good friars

have always taken more than they gave; and if it were not for the gaping

mouths under the cowl even a poor man might have victuals enough for his

own."

The first speaker turned on him contentiously.

"Do I understand you are for this new charter, then?" he asked.

"No, no," said the other. "Better hot polenta than a cold ortolan.

Things are none too good as they are, but I never care to taste first of

a new dish. And in this case I don't fancy the cook."

"Ah, that's it," said the soft man. "It's too much like the apothecary's

wife mixing his drugs for him. Men of Roman lineage want no women to

govern them!" He puffed himself out and thrust a hand in his bosom.

"Besides, gentlemen," he added, dropping his voice and glancing

cautiously about the room, "the saints are my witness I'm not

superstitious--but frankly, now, I don't much fancy this business of the

Virgin's crown."

"What do you mean?" asked a lean visionary-looking youth who had been

drinking and listening.

"Why, sir, I needn't say I'm the last man in Pianura to listen to

women's tattle; but my wife had it straight from Cino the barber, whose

sister is portress of the Benedictines, that, two days since, one of the

nuns foretold the whole business, precisely as it happened--and what's

more, many that were in the Church this morning will tell you that they

distinctly saw the blessed image raise both arms and tear the crown from

her head."

"H'm," said the young man flippantly, "what became of the Bambino

meanwhile, I wonder?"

The scribe shrugged his shoulders. "We all know," said he, "that Cino

the barber lies like a christened Jew; but I'm not surprised the thing

was known in advance, for I make no doubt the priests pulled the wires

that brought down the crown."

The fat man looked scandalised, and the first speaker waved the subject

aside as unworthy of attention.

"Such tales are for women and monks," he said impatiently. "But the

business has its serious side. I tell you we are being hurried to our

ruin. Here's this matter of draining the marshes at Pontesordo. Who's to

pay for that? The class that profits by it? Not by a long way. It's we

who drain the land, and the peasants are to live on it."

The visionary youth tossed back his hair. "But isn't that an inspiration

to you, sir?" he exclaimed. "Does not your heart dilate at the thought

of uplifting the condition of your down-trodden fellows?"

"My fellows? The peasantry my fellows?" cried the other. "I'd have you

know, my young master, that I come of a long and honourable line of

cloth-merchants, that have had their names on the Guild for two hundred

years and over. I've nothing to do with the peasantry, thank God!"

The youth had emptied another glass. "What?" he screamed. "You deny the

universal kinship of man? You disown your starving brothers? Proud

tyrant, remember the Bastille!" He burst into tears and began to quote

Alfieri.

"Well," said the fat man, turning a disgusted shoulder on this display

of emotion, "to my mind this business of draining Pontesordo is too much

like telling the Almighty what to do. If God made the land wet, what

right have we to dry it? Those that begin by meddling with the Creator's

works may end by laying hands on the Creator."

"You're right," said another. "There's no knowing where these

new-fangled notions may land us. For my part, I was rather taken by them

at first; but since I find that his Highness, to pay for all his good

works, is cutting down his household and throwing decent people out of a

job--like my own son, for instance, that was one of the under-steward's

boys at the palace--why, since then, I begin to see a little farther

into the game."

A shabby shrewd-looking fellow in a dirty coat and snuff-stained stock

had sauntered up to the table and stood listening with an amused smile.

"Ah," said the scribe, glancing up, "here's a thoroughgoing reformer,

who'll be asking us all to throw up our hats for the new charter."

The new-comer laughed contemptuously. "I?" he said. "God forbid! The new

charter's none of my making. It's only another dodge for getting round

the populace--for appearing to give them what they would rise up and

take if it were denied them any longer."

"Why, I thought you were hot for these reforms?" exclaimed the fat man

with surprise.

The other shrugged. "You might as well say I was in favour of having the

sun rise tomorrow. It would probably rise at the same hour if I voted

against it. Reform is bound to come, whether your Dukes and Princes are

for it or against it; and those that grant constitutions instead of

refusing them are like men who tie a string to their hats before going

out in a gale. The string may hold for a while--but if it blows hard

enough the hats will all come off in the end."

"Ay, ay; and meanwhile we furnish the string from our own pockets," said

the scribe with a chuckle.

The shabby man grinned. "It won't be the last thing to come out of your

pockets," said he, turning to push his way toward another table.

The others rose and called for their reckoning; and the listener on the

cask slipped out of his corner, elbowed a passage to the door and

stepped forth into the square.

It was after midnight, a thin drizzle was falling, and the crowd had

scattered. The rain was beginning to extinguish the paper lanterns and

the torches, and the canvas sides of the tents flapped dismally, like

wet sheets on a clothes-line. The man drew his cloak closer, and

avoiding the stragglers who crossed his path, turned into the first

street that led to the palace. He walked fast over the slippery

cobble-stones, buffeted by a rising wind and threading his way between

dark walls and sleeping house-fronts till he reached the lane below the

ducal gardens. He unlocked the door by which he had come forth, entered

the gardens, and paused a moment on the terrace above the lane.

Behind him rose the palace, a dark irregular bulk, with a lighted window

showing here and there. Before him lay the city, an indistinguishable

huddle of roofs and towers under the rainy night. He stood awhile gazing

out over it; then he turned and walked toward the palace. The garden

alleys were deserted, the pleached walks dark as subterranean passages,

with the wet gleam of statues starting spectrally out of the blackness.

The man walked rapidly, leaving the Borromini wing on his left, and

skirting the outstanding mass of the older buildings. Behind the marble

buttresses of the chapel, he crossed the dense obscurity of a court

between high walls, found a door under an archway, turned a key in the

lock, and gained a spiral stairway as dark as the court. He groped his

way up the stairs and paused a moment on the landing to listen. Then he

opened another door, lifted a heavy hanging of tapestry, and stepped

into the Duke's closet. It stood empty, with a lamp burning low on the

desk.

The man threw off his cloak and hat, dropped into a chair beside the

desk, and hid his face in his hands.

4.9.

It was the eve of the Duke's birthday. A cabinet council had been called

in the morning, and his Highness's ministers had submitted to him the

revised draft of the constitution which was to be proclaimed on the

morrow.

Throughout the conference, which was brief and formal, Odo had been

conscious of a subtle change in the ministerial atmosphere. Instead of

the current of resistance against which he had grown used to forcing his

way, he became aware of a tacit yielding to his will. Trescorre had

apparently withdrawn his opposition to the charter, and the other

ministers had followed suit. To Odo's overwrought imagination there was

something ominous in the change. He had counted on the goad of

opposition to fight off the fatal languor which he had learned to expect

at such crises. Now that he found there was to be no struggle he

understood how largely his zeal had of late depended on such factitious

incentives. He felt an irrational longing to throw himself on the other

side of the conflict, to tear in bits the paper awaiting his signature,

and disown the policy which had dictated it. But the tide of

acquiescence on which he was afloat was no stagnant back-water of

indifference, but the glassy reach just above the fall of a river. The

current was as swift as it was smooth, and he felt himself hurried

forward to an end he could no longer escape. He took the pen which

Trescorre handed him, and signed the constitution.

The meeting over, he summoned Gamba. He felt the need of such

encouragement as the hunchback alone could give. Fulvia's enthusiasms

were too unreal, too abstract. She lived in a region of ideals, whence

ugly facts were swept out by some process of mental housewifery which

kept her world perpetually smiling and immaculate. Gamba at least fed

his convictions on facts. If his outlook was narrow it was direct: no

roseate medium of fancy was interposed between his vision and the truth.

He stood listening thoughtfully while Odo poured forth his doubts.

"Your Highness may well hesitate," he said at last. "There are always

more good reasons against a new state of things than for it. I am not

surprised that Count Trescorre appears to have withdrawn his opposition.

I believe he now honestly wishes your Highness to proclaim the

constitution."

Odo looked up in surprise. "You do not mean that he has come to believe

in it?"

Gamba smiled. "Probably not in your Highness's sense; but he may have

found a use of his own for it."

"What do you mean?" Odo asked.

"If he does not believe it will benefit the state he may think it will

injure your Highness."

"Ah--" said the Duke slowly.

There was a pause, during which he was possessed by the same shuddering

reluctance to fix his mind on the facts before him as when he had

questioned the hunchback about Momola's death. He longed to cast the

whole business aside, to be up and away from it, drawing breath in a new

world where every air was not tainted with corruption. He raised his

head with an effort.

"You think, then, that the liberals are secretly acting against me in

this matter?"

"I am persuaded of it, your Highness."

Odo hesitated. "You have always told me," he began again, "that the love

of dominion was your brother's ruling passion. If he really believes

this movement will be popular with the people, why should he secretly

oppose it, instead of making the most of his own share in it as the

minister of a popular sovereign?"

"For several reasons," Gamba answered promptly. "In the first place, the

reforms your Highness has introduced are not of his own choosing, and

Trescorre has little sympathy with any policy he has not dictated. In

the second place, the powers and opportunities of a constitutional

minister are too restricted to satisfy his appetite for rule; and

thirdly--" he paused a moment, as though doubtful how his words would be

received--"I suspect Trescorre of having a private score against your

Highness, which he would be glad to pay off publicly."

Odo fell silent, yielding himself to a fresh current of thought.

"I know not what score he may have against me," he said at length; "but

what injures me must injure the state, and if Trescorre has any such

motive for withdrawing his opposition, it must be because he believes

the constitution will defeat its own ends."

"He does believe that, assuredly; but he is not the only one of your

Highness's ministers that would ruin the state on the chance of finding

an opportunity among the ruins."

"That is as it may be," said Odo with a touch of weariness. "I have seen

enough of human ambition to learn how limited and unimaginative a

passion it is. If it saw farther I should fear it more. But if it is

short-sighted it sees clearly at close range; and the motive you ascribe

to Trescorre would imply that he believes the constitution will be a

failure."

"Without doubt, your Highness. I am convinced that your ministers have

done all they could to prevent the proclamation of the charter, and

failing that, to thwart its workings if it be proclaimed. In this they

have gone hand in hand with the clergy, and their measures have been

well taken. But I do not believe that any state of mind produced by

external influences can long withstand the natural drift of opinion; and

your Highness may be sure that, though the talkers and writers are

mostly against you in this matter, the mass of the people are with you."

Odo answered with a despairing gesture. "How can I be sure, when the

people have no means of expressing their needs? It is like trying to

guess the wants of a deaf and dumb man!"

The hunchback flushed suddenly. "The people will not always be deaf and

dumb," he said. "Some day they will speak."

"Not in my day," said Odo wearily. "And meanwhile we blunder on, without

ever really knowing what incalculable instincts and prejudices are

pitted against us. You and your party tell me the people are sick of the

burdens the clergy lay on them--yet their blind devotion to the Church

is manifest at every turn, and it did not need the business of the

Virgin's crown to show me how little reason and justice can avail

against such influences."

Gamba replied by an impatient gesture. "As to the Virgin's crown," he

said, "your Highness must have guessed it was one of the friars' tricks:

a last expedient to turn the people against you. I was not bred up by a

priest for nothing; I know what past masters those gentry are in raising

ghosts and reading portents. They know the minds of the poor folk as the

herdsman knows the habits of his cattle; and for generations they have

used that knowledge to bring the people more completely under their

control."

"And what have we to oppose to such a power?" Odo exclaimed. "We are

fighting the battle of ideas against passions, of reflection against

instinct; and you have but to look in the human heart to guess which

side will win in such a struggle. We have science and truth and

common-sense with us, you say--yes, but the Church has love and fear and

tradition, and the solidarity of nigh two thousand years of dominion."

Gamba listened in respectful silence; then he replied with a faint

smile: "All that your Highness says is true; but I beg leave to relate

to your Highness a tale which I read lately in an old book of your

library. According to this story it appears that when the early

Christians of Alexandria set out to destroy the pagan idols in the

temples they were seized with great dread at sight of the god Serapis;

for even those that did not believe in the old gods feared them, and

none dared raise a hand against the sacred image. But suddenly a soldier

who was bolder than the rest flung his battle-axe at the figure--and

when it broke in pieces, there rushed out nothing worse than a great

company of rats."...

* * * * *

The Duke had promised to visit Fulvia that evening. For several days his

state of indecision had made him find pretexts for avoiding her; but now

that the charter was signed and he had ordered its proclamation, he

craved the contact of her unwavering faith.

He found her alone in the dusk of the convent parlour; but he had hardly

crossed the threshold before he was aware of an indefinable change in

his surroundings. She advanced with an impulsiveness out of harmony with

the usual tranquillity of their meetings, and he felt her hand tremble

and burn in his. In the twilight it seemed to him that her very dress

had a warmer rustle and glimmer, that there emanated from her glance and

movements some heady fragrance of a long-past summer. He smiled to think

that this phantom coquetry should have risen at the summons of an

academic degree; but some deeper sense in him was stirred as by a vision

of waste riches adrift on the dim seas of chance.

For a moment she sat silent, as in the days when they had been too near

each other for many words; and there was something indescribably

soothing in this dreamlike return to the past. It was he who roused

himself first.

"How young you look!" he said, giving involuntary utterance to his

thought.

"Do I?" she answered gaily. "I am glad of that, for I feel

extraordinarily young tonight. Perhaps it is because I have been

thinking a great deal of the old days--of Venice and Turin--and of the

high-road to Vercelli, for instance." She glanced at him with a smile.

"Do you know," she went on, moving to a seat at his side, and laying a

hand on the arm of his chair, "that there is one secret of mine you have

never guessed in all these years?"

Odo returned her smile. "What is it, I wonder?" he said.

She fixed him with bright bantering eyes. "I knew why you deserted us at

Vercelli." He uttered an exclamation, but she lifted a hand to his lips.

"Ah, how angry I was then--but why be angry now? It all happened so long

ago; and if it had not happened--who knows?--perhaps you would never

have pitied me enough to love me as you did." She laughed softly,

reminiscently, leaning back as if to let the tide of memories ripple

over her. Then she raised her head suddenly, and said in a changed

voice: "Are your plans fixed for tomorrow?"

Odo glanced at her in surprise. Her mind seemed to move as capriciously

as Maria Clementina's.

"The constitution is signed," he answered, "and my ministers proclaim it

tomorrow morning." He looked at her a moment, and lifted her hand to his

lips. "Everything has been done according to your wishes," he said.

She drew away with a start, and he saw that she had turned pale. "No,

no--not as I wish," she murmured. "It must not be because _I_ wish--"

she broke off and her hand slipped from his.

"You have taught me to wish as you wish," he answered gently. "Surely

you would not disown your pupil now?"

Her agitation increased. "Do not call yourself that!" she exclaimed.

"Not even in jest. What you have done has been done of your own

choice--because you thought it best for your people. My nearness or

absence could have made no difference."

He looked at her with growing wonder. "Why this sudden modesty?" he said

with a smile. "I thought you prided yourself on your share in the great

work."

She tried to force an answering smile, but the curve broke into a quiver

of distress, and she came close to him, with a gesture that seemed to

take flight from herself.

"Don't say it, don't say it!" she broke out. "What right have they to

call it my doing? I but stood aside and watched you and gloried in

you--is there any guilt to a woman in THAT?" She clung to him a moment,

hiding her face in his breast.

He loosened her arms gently, that he might draw back and look at her.

"Fulvia," he asked, "what ails you? You are not yourself tonight. Has

anything happened to distress you? Have you been annoyed or alarmed in

any way?--It is not possible," he broke off, "that Trescorre has been

here--?"

She drew away, flushed and protesting. "No, no," she exclaimed. "Why

should Trescorre come here? Why should you fancy that any one has been

here? I am excited, I know; I talk idly; but it is because I have been

thinking too long of these things--"

"Of what things?"

"Of what people say--how can one help hearing that? I sometimes fancy

that the more withdrawn one lives the more distinctly one hears the

outer noises."

"But why should you heed the outer noises? You have never done so

before."

"Perhaps I was wrong not to do so before. Perhaps I should have listened

sooner. Perhaps others have seen--understood--sooner than I--oh, the

thought is intolerable!"

She moved a pace or two away, and then, regaining the mastery of her

lips and eyes, turned to him with a show of calmness.

"Your heart was never in this charter--" she began.

"Fulvia!" he cried protestingly; but she lifted a silencing hand. "Ah, I

have seen it--I have felt it--but I was never willing to own that you

were right. My pride in you blinded me, I suppose. I could not bear to

dream any fate for you but the greatest. I saw you always leading

events, rather than waiting on them. But true greatness lies in the man,

not in his actions. Compromise, delay, renunciation--these may be as

heroic as conflict. A woman's vision is so narrow that I did not see

this at first. You have always told me that I looked only at one side of

the question; but I see the other side now--I see that you were right."

Odo stood silent. He had followed her with growing wonder. A volte-face

so little in keeping with her mental habits immediately struck him as a

feint; yet so strangely did it accord with his own secret reluctances

that these inclined him to let it pass unquestioned.

Some instinctive loyalty to his past checked the temptation. "I am not

sure that I understand you," he said slowly. "Have you lost faith in the

ideas we have worked for?"

She hesitated, and he saw the struggle beneath her surface calmness.

"No, no," she exclaimed quickly, "I have not lost faith in them--"

"In me, then?"

She smiled with a disarming sadness. "That would be so much simpler!"

she murmured.

"What do you mean, then?" he urged. "We must understand each other." He

paused, and measured his words out slowly. "Do you think it a mistake to

proclaim the constitution tomorrow?"

Again her face was full of shadowy contradictions. "I entreat you not to

proclaim it tomorrow," she said in a low voice.

Odo felt the blood drum in his ears. Was not this the word for which he

had waited? But still some deeper instinct held him back, warning him,

as it seemed, that to fall below his purpose at such a juncture was the

only measurable failure. He must know more before he yielded, see deeper

into her heart and his; and each moment brought the clearer conviction

that there was more to know and see.

"This is unlike you, Fulvia," he said. "You cannot make such a request

on impulse. You must have a reason."

She smiled. "You told me once that a woman's reasons are only impulses

in men's clothes."

But he was not to be diverted by this thrust. "I shall think so now," he

said, "unless you can give me some better account of yours!"

She was silent, and he pressed on with a persistency for which he

himself could hardly account: "You must have a reason for this request."

"I have one," she said, dropping her attempts at evasion.

"And it is--?"

She paused again, with a look of appeal against which he had to stiffen

himself.

"I do not believe the time has come," she said at length.

"You think the people are not ready for the constitution?"

She answered with an effort: "I think the people are not ready for it."

He fell silent, and they sat facing each other, but with eyes apart.

"You have received this impression from Gamba, from Andreoni--from the

members of our party?" he asked.

She made no reply.

"Remember, Fulvia," he went on almost sternly, "that this is the end for

which we have worked together all these years--the end for which we

renounced each other and went forth in our youth, you to exile and I to

an unwilling sovereignty. It was because we loved this cause better than

ourselves that we had strength to give up for it our personal hopes of

happiness. If we betray the cause from any merely personal motive we

shall have fallen below our earlier selves." He waited again, but she

was still silent. "Can you swear to me," he went on, "that no such

motive influences you now? That you honestly believe we have been

deceived and mistaken? That our years of faith and labour have been

wasted, and that, if mankind is to be helped, it is to be in other ways

and by other efforts than ours?"

He stood before her accusingly, almost, the passion of the long fight

surging up in him as he felt the weapon drop from his hand.

Fulvia had sat motionless under his appeal; but as he paused she rose

with an impulsive gesture. "Oh, why do you torment me with questions?"

she cried, half-sobbing. "I venture to counsel a delay, and you arraign

me as though I stood at the day of judgment!"

"It IS our day of judgment," he retorted. "It is the day on which life

confronts us with our own actions, and we must justify them or own

ourselves deluded." He went up to her and caught her hands entreatingly.

"Fulvia," he said, "I too have doubted, wavered--and if you will give me

one honest reason that is worthy of us both--"

She broke from him to hide her weeping. "Reasons! reasons!" she

stammered. "What does the heart know of reasons? I ask a favour--the

first I ever asked of you--and you answer it by haggling with me for

reasons!"

Something in her voice and gesture was like a lightning-flash over a

dark landscape. In an instant he saw the pit at his feet.

"Some one has been with you. Those words were not yours," he cried.

She rallied instantly. "That is a pretext for not heeding them!" she

returned.

The lightning glared again. He stepped close and faced her.

"The Duchess has been here," he said.

She dropped into a chair and hid her face from him. A wave of anger

mounted from his heart, choking back his words and filling his brain

with its fumes. But as it subsided he felt himself suddenly cool, firm,

attempered. There could be no wavering, no self-questioning now.

"When did this happen?" he asked.

She shook her head despairingly.

"Fulvia," he said, "if you will not speak I will speak for you. I can

guess what arguments were used--what threats, even. Were there threats?"

burst from him in a fresh leap of anger.

She raised her head slowly. "Threats would not have mattered," she said.

"But your fears were played on--your fears for my safety?--Fulvia,

answer me!" he insisted.

She rose suddenly and laid her arms about his shoulders, with a gesture

half-tender, half-maternal.

"Oh," she said, "why will you torture me? I have borne much for our

love's sake, and would have borne this too--in silence, like the

rest--but to speak of it is to relieve it; and my strength fails me!"

He held her hands fast, keeping his eyes on hers. "No," he said, "for

your strength never failed you when there was any call on it; and our

whole past calls on it now. Rouse yourself, Fulvia: look life in the

face! You were told there might be troubles tomorrow--that I was in

danger, perhaps?"

"There was worse--there was worse," she shuddered.

"Worse?"

"The blame was laid on me--the responsibility. Your love for me, my

power over you, were accused. The people hate me--they hate you for

loving me! Oh, I have destroyed you!" she cried.

Odo felt a slow cold strength pouring into all his veins. It was as

though his enemies, in thinking to mix a mortal poison, had rendered him

invulnerable. He bent over her with great gentleness.

"Fulvia, this is madness," he said. "A moment's thought must show you

what passions are here at work. Can you not rise above such fears? No

one can judge between us but ourselves."

"Ah, but you do not know--you will not understand. Your life may be in

danger!" she cried.

"I have been told that before," he said contemptuously. "It is a common

trick of the political game."

"This is no trick," she exclaimed. "I was made to see--to

understand--and I swear to you that the danger is real."

"And what if it were? Is the Church to have all the martyrs?" said he

gaily. "Come, Fulvia, shake off such fancies. My life is as safe as

yours. At worst there may be a little hissing to be faced. That is easy

enough compared to facing one's own doubts. And I have no doubts

now--that is all past, thank heaven! I see the road straight before

me--as straight as when you showed it to me once before, years ago, in

the inn-parlour at Peschiera. You pointed the way to it then; surely you

would not hold me back from it now?"

He took her in his arms and kissed her lips to silence.

"When we meet tomorrow," he said, releasing her, "It will be as teacher

and pupil, you in your doctor's gown and I a learner at your feet. Put

your old faith in me into your argument, and we shall have all Pianura

converted."

He hastened away through the dim gardens, carrying a boy's heart in his

breast.

4.10.

The University of Pianura was lodged in the ancient Signoria or Town

Hall of the free city; and here, on the afternoon of the Duke's

birthday, the civic dignitaries and the leading men of the learned

professions had assembled to see the doctorate conferred on the

Signorina Fulvia Vivaldi and on several less conspicuous candidates of

the other sex.

The city was again in gala dress. Early that morning the new

constitution had been proclaimed, with much firing of cannon and display

of official fireworks; but even these great news, and their attendant

manifestations, had failed to enliven the populace, who, instead of

filling the streets with their usual stir, hung massed at certain

points, as though curiously waiting on events. There are few sights more

ominous than that of a crowd thus observing itself, watching in

inconscient suspense for the unknown crisis which its own passions have

engendered.

It was known that his Highness, after the public banquet at the palace,

was to proceed in state to the University; and the throng was thick

about the palace gates and in the streets betwixt it and the Signoria.

Here the square was close-packed, and every window choked with gazers,

as the Duke's coach came in sight, escorted meagrely by his equerries

and the half-dozen light-horse that preceded him. The small escort, and

the marked absence of military display, perhaps disappointed the

splendour-loving crowd; and from this cause or another, scarce a cheer

was heard as his Highness descended from his coach, and walked up the

steps to the porch of ancient carved stone where the faculty awaited

him.

The hall was already filled with students and graduates, and with the

guests of the University. Through this grave assemblage the Duke passed

up to the row of armchairs beneath the dais at the farther end of the

room. Trescorre, who was to have attended his Highness, had excused

himself on the plea of indisposition, and only a few

gentlemen-in-waiting accompanied the Duke; but in the brown half-light

of the old Gothic hall their glittering uniforms contrasted brilliantly

with the black gowns of the students, and the sober broadcloth of the

learned professions. A discreet murmur of enthusiasm rose at their

approach, mounting almost to a cheer as the Duke bowed before taking his

seat; for the audience represented the class most in sympathy with his

policy and most confident of its success.

The meetings of the faculty were held in the great council-chamber where

the Rectors of the old free city had assembled; and such a setting was

regarded as peculiarly appropriate to the present occasion. The fact was

alluded to, with much wealth of historical and mythological analogy, by

the President, who opened the ceremonies with a polysyllabic Latin

oration, in which the Duke was compared to Apollo, Hercules and Jason,

as well as to the flower of sublunary heroes.

This feat of rhetoric over, the candidates were called on to advance and

receive their degrees. The men came first, profiting by the momentary

advantage of sex, but clearly aware of its inability to confer even

momentary importance in the eyes of the impatient audience. A pause

followed, and then Fulvia appeared. Against the red-robed faculty at the

back of the dais, she stood tall and slender in her black cap and gown.

The high windows of painted glass shed a paleness on her face, but her

carriage was light and assured as she advanced to the President and

knelt to receive her degree. The parchment was placed in her hand, the

furred hood laid on her shoulders; then, after another flourish of

rhetoric, she was led to the lectern from which her discourse was to be

delivered. Odo sat just below her, and as she took her place their eyes

met for an instant. He was caught up in the serene exaltation of her

look, as though she soared with him above wind and cloud to a region of

unshadowed calm; then her eyes fell and she began to speak.

She had a pretty mastery of Latin, and though she had never before

spoken in public, her poetical recitations, and the early habit of

intercourse with her father's friends, had given her a fair measure of

fluency and self-possession. These qualities were raised to eloquence by

the sweetness of her voice, and by the grave beauty which made the

academic gown seem her natural wear, rather than a travesty of learning.

Odo at first had some difficulty in fixing his attention on what she

said; and when he controlled his thoughts she was in the height of her

panegyric of constitutional liberty. She had begun slowly, almost

coldly; but now her theme possessed her. One by one she evoked the

familiar formulas with which his mind had once reverberated. They woke

no echo in him now; but he saw that she could still set them ringing

through the sensibilities of her hearers. As she stood there, a slight

impassioned figure, warming to her high argument, his sense of irony was

touched by the incongruity of her background. The wall behind her was

covered by an ancient fresco, fast fading under its touches of renewed

gilding, and representing the patron scholars of the mediaeval world:

the theologians, law-givers and logicians under whose protection the

free city had placed its budding liberties. There they sat, rigid and

sumptuous on their Gothic thrones: Origen, Zeno, David, Lycurgus,

Aristotle; listening in a kind of cataleptic helplessness to a

confession of faith that scattered their doctrines to the winds. As he

looked and listened, a weary sense of the reiterance of things came over

him. For what were these ancient manipulators of ideas, prestidigitators

of a vanished world of thought, but the forbears of the long line of

theorists of whom Fulvia was the last inconscient mouthpiece? The new

game was still played with the old counters, the new jugglers repeated

the old tricks; and the very words now poured out in defence of the new

cause were but mercenaries scarred in the service of its enemies. For

generations, for centuries, man had fought on; crying for liberty,

dreaming it was won, waking to find himself the slave of the new forces

he had generated, burning and being burnt for the same beliefs under

different guises, calling his instinct ideas and his ideas revelations;

destroying, rebuilding, falling, rising, mending broken weapons,

championing extinct illusions, mistaking his failures for achievements

and planting his flag on the ramparts as they fell. And as the vision of

this inveterate conflict rose before him, Odo saw that the beauty, the

power, the immortality, dwelt not in the idea but in the struggle for

it.

His resistance yielded as this sense stole over him, and with an almost

physical relief he felt himself drawn once more into the familiar

current of emotion. Yes, it was better after all to be one of that great

unconquerable army, though, like the Trojans fighting for a phantom

Helen, they might be doing battle for the shadow of a shade; better to

march in their ranks, endure with them, fight with them, fall with them,

than to miss the great enveloping sense of brotherhood that turned

defeat to victory.

As the conviction grew in him, Fulvia's words regained their lost

significance. Through the set mask of language the living thoughts

looked forth, old indeed as the world, but renewed with the new life of

every heart that bore them. She had left the abstract and dropped to

concrete issues: to the gift of the constitution, the benefits and

obligations it implied, the new relations it established between ruler

and subject and between man and man. Odo saw that she approached the

question without flinching. No trace remained of the trembling woman who

had clung to him the night before. Her old convictions repossessed her

and she soared above human fears.

So engrossed was he that he had been unaware of a growing murmur of

sound which seemed to be forcing its way from without through the walls

of the ancient building. As Fulvia's oration neared its end the murmur

rose to a roar. Startled faces were turned toward the doors of the

council-chamber, and one of the Duke's gentlemen left his seat and made

his way through the audience. Odo sat motionless, his eyes on Fulvia. He

noticed that her face paled as the sound reached her, but there was no

break in the voice with which she uttered the closing words of her

peroration. As she ended, the noise was momentarily drowned under a loud

burst of clapping; but this died in a hush of apprehension through which

the outer tumult became more ominously audible. The equerry reentered

the hall with a disordered countenance. He hastened to the Duke and

addressed him urgently.

"Your Highness," he said, "the crowd has thickened and wears an ugly

look. There are many friars abroad, and images of the Mountain Virgin

are being carried in procession. Will your Highness be pleased to remain

here while I summon an escort from the barracks?"

Odo was still watching Fulvia. She had received the applause of the

audience with a deep reverence, and was now in the act of withdrawing to

the inner room at the back of the dais. Her eyes met Odo's; she smiled

and the door closed on her. He turned to the equerry.

"There is no need of an escort," he said. "I trust my people if they do

not trust me."

"But, your Highness, the streets are full of demagogues who have been

haranguing the people since morning. The crowd is shouting against the

constitution and against the Signorina Vivaldi."

A flame of anger passed over the Duke's face; but he subdued it

instantly.

"Go to the Signorina Vivaldi," he said, pointing to the door by which

Fulvia had left the hall. "Assure her that there is no danger, but ask

her to remain where she is till the crowd disperses, and request the

faculty in my name to remain with her."

The equerry bowed, and hurried up the steps of the dais, while the Duke

signed to his other companions to precede him to the door of the hall.

As they walked down the long room, between the close-packed ranks of the

audience, the outer tumult surged threateningly toward them. Near the

doorway, another of the gentlemen-in-waiting was seen to speak with the

Duke.

"Your Highness," he said, "there is a private way at the back by which

you may yet leave the building unobserved."

"You appear to forget that I entered it publicly," said Odo.

"But, your Highness, we cannot answer for the consequences--"

The Duke signed to the ushers to throw open the doors. They obeyed, and

he stepped out into the stone vestibule preceding the porch. The

iron-barred outer doors of this vestibule were securely bolted, and the

porter hung back in affright at the order to unlock them.

"Your Highness, the people are raving mad," he said, flinging himself on

his knees.

Odo turned impatiently to his escort. "Unbar the doors, gentlemen," he

said. The blood was drumming in his ears, but his eye was clear and

steady, and he noted with curious detachment the comic agony of the fat

porter's face, and the strain and swell of the equerry's muscles as he

dragged back the ponderous bolts.

The doors swung open, and the Duke emerged. Below him, still with that

unimpaired distinctness of vision which seemed a part of his heightened

vitality, he saw a great gesticulating mass of people. They packed the

square so closely that their own numbers held them immovable, save for

their swaying arms and heads; and those whom the square could not

contain had climbed to porticoes, balconies and cornices, and massed

themselves in the neck of the adjoining streets. The handful of

light-horse who had escorted the Duke's carriage formed a single line at

the foot of the steps, so that the approach to the porch was still

clear; but it was plain that the crowd, with its next movement, would

break through this slender barrier and hem in the Duke.

At Odo's appearance the shouting had ceased and every eye was turned on

him. He stood there, a brilliant target, in his laced coat of

peach-coloured velvet, his breast covered with orders, a hand on his

jewelled sword-hilt. For a moment sovereign and subjects measured each

other; and in that moment Odo drank his deepest draught of life. He was

not thinking now of the constitution or its opponents. His present

business was to get down the steps and into the carriage, returning to

the palace as openly as he had come. He was conscious of neither pity

nor hatred for the throng in his path. For the moment he regarded them

merely as a natural force, to be fought against like storm or flood. His

clearest sensation was one of relief at having at last some material

obstacle to spend his strength against, instead of the impalpable powers

which had so long beset him. He felt, too, a boyish satisfaction at his

own steadiness of pulse and eye, at the absence of that fatal inertia

which he had come to dread. So clear was his mental horizon that it

embraced not only the present crisis, but a dozen incidents leading up

to it. He remembered that Trescorre had urged him to take a larger

escort, and that he had refused on the ground that any military display

might imply a doubt of his people. He was glad now that he had done so.

He would have hated to slink to his carriage behind a barrier of drawn

swords. He wanted no help to see him through this business. The blood

sang in his veins at the thought of facing it alone.

The silence lasted but a moment; then an image of the Mountain Virgin

was suddenly thrust in air, and a voice cried out: "Down with our Lady's

enemies! We want no laws against the friars!"

A howl caught up the words and tossed them to and fro above the seething

heads. Images of the Virgin, religious banners, the blue-and-white of

the Madonna's colours, suddenly canopied the crowd.

"We want the Barnabites back!" sang out another voice.

"Down with the free-thinkers!" yelled a hundred angry throats.

A stone or two sped through the air and struck the sculptures of the

porch.

"Your Highness!" cried the equerry who stood nearest, and would have

snatched the Duke back within doors.

For all answer, Odo stepped clear of the porch and advanced to the edge

of the steps. As he did so, a shower of missiles hummed about him, and a

stone struck him on the lip. The blood rushed to his head, and he swayed

in the sudden grip of anger; but he mastered himself and raised his lace

handkerchief to the cut.

His gentlemen had drawn their swords; but he signed to them to sheathe

again. His first thought was that he must somehow make the people hear

him. He lifted his hand and advanced a step; but as he did so a shot

rang out, followed by a loud cry. The lieutenant of the light-horse,

infuriated by the insult to his master, had drawn the pistol from his

holster and fired blindly into the crowd. His bullet had found a mark,

and the throng hissed and seethed about the spot where a man had fallen.

At the same instant Odo was aware of a commotion in the group behind

him, and with a great plunge of the heart he saw Fulvia at his side. She

still wore the academic dress, and her black gown detached itself

sharply against the bright colours of the ducal uniforms.

Groans and hisses received her, but the mob hung back, as though her

look had checked them. Then a voice shrieked out: "Down with the

atheist! We want no foreign witches!" and another caught it up with the

yell: "She poisoned the weaver's boy! Her father was hanged for

murdering Christian children!"

The cry set the crowd in motion again, and it rolled toward the line of

mounted soldiers at the foot of the steps. The men had their hands on

their holsters; but the Duke's call rang out: "No firing!" and drawing

their blades, they sat motionless to receive the shock.

It came, dashed against them and dispersed them. Only a few yards lay

now between the people and their sovereign. But at that moment another

shot was fired. This time it came from the thick of the crowd. The

equerries' swords leapt forth again, and they closed around the Duke and

Fulvia.

"Save yourself, sir! Back into the building!" one of the gentlemen

shouted; but Odo had no eyes for what was coming. For as the shot was

heard he had seen a change in Fulvia. A moment they had stood together,

smiling, undaunted, hands locked and wedded eyes, then he felt her

dissolve against him and drop between his arms.

A cry had gone out that the Duke was wounded, and a leaden silence fell

on the crowd. In that silence Odo knelt, lifting Fulvia's head to his

breast. No wound showed through her black gown. She lay as though

smitten by some invisible hand. So deep was the hush that her least

whisper must have reached him; but though he bent close no whisper came.

The invisible hand had struck the very source of life; and to these two,

in their moment of final reunion, with so much unsaid between them that

now at last they longed to say, there was left only the dumb communion

of fast-clouding eyes...

A clatter of cavalry was heard down the streets that led to the square.

The equerry sent to warn Fulvia had escaped from the back of the

building and hastened to the barracks to summon a regiment. But the

soldiery were no longer needed. The blind fury of the mob had died of

its own excess. The rumour that the Duke was hurt brought a chill

reaction of dismay, and the rioters were already scattering when the

cavalry came in sight. Their approach turned the slow dispersal to a

stampede. A few arrests were made, the remaining groups were charged by

the soldiers, and presently the square lay bare as a storm-swept plain,

though the people still hung on its outskirts, ready to disband at the

first threat of the troops.

It was on this solitude that the Duke looked out as he regained a sense

of his surroundings. Fulvia had been carried into the audience-chamber

and laid on the dais, her head resting on the velvet cushions of the

ducal chair. She had died instantly, shot through the heart, and the

surgeons summoned in haste had soon ceased from their ineffectual

efforts. For a long time Odo knelt beside her, unconscious of all but

that one wild moment when life at its highest had been dashed into the

gulf of death. Thought had ceased, and neither rage nor grief moved as

yet across the chaos of his being. All his life was in his eyes, as they

drew up, drop by drop, the precious essence of her loveliness. For she

had grown, beneath the simplifying hand of death, strangely yet most

humanly beautiful. Life had fallen from her like the husk from the

flower, and she wore the face of her first hopes. The transition had

been too swift for any backward look, any anguished rending of the

fibres, and he felt himself, not detached by the stroke, but caught up

with her into some great calm within the heart of change.

He knew not how he found himself once more on the steps above the

square. Below him his state carriage stood in the same place, flanked by

the regiment of cavalry. Down the narrow streets he saw the brooding

cloud of people, and the sight roused his blood. They were his enemies

now--he felt the warm hate in his veins. They were his enemies, and he

would face them openly. No closed chariot guarded by troops--he would

not have so much as a pane of glass between himself and his subjects. He

descended the steps, bade the colonel of the regiment dismount, and

sprang into his saddle. Then, at the head of his soldiers, at a

foot-pace, he rode back through the packed streets to the palace.

In the palace, courtyard and vestibule were thronged with courtiers and

lacqueys. He walked through them with his head high, the cut on his lip

like the mark of a hot iron in the dead whiteness of his face. At the

head of the great staircase Maria Clementina waited. She sprang forward,

distraught and trembling, her face as blanched as his.

"You are safe--you are safe--you are not hurt--" she stammered, catching

at his hands.

A shudder seized him as he put her aside.

"Odo! Odo!" she cried passionately, and made as though to bar his way.

He gave her a blind look and passed on down the long gallery to his

closet.

4.11.

The joy of reprisals lasted no longer than a summer storm. To hurt, to

silence, to destroy, was too easy to be satisfying. The passions of his

ancestors burned low in Odo's breast: though he felt Bracciaforte's fury

in his veins he could taste no answering gratification of revenge. And

the spirit on which he would have spent his hatred was not here or

there, as an embodied faction, but everywhere as an intangible

influence. The acqua tofana of his enemies had pervaded every fibre of

the state.

The mist of anguish lifted, he saw himself alone among ruins. For a

moment Fulvia's glowing faith had hung between him and a final vision of

the truth; and as his convictions weakened he had replaced them with an

immense pity, an all-sufficing hope. Sentimental verbiage: he saw it

clearly now. He had been the dupe of the old word-jugglery which was

forever confounding fact and fancy in men's minds. For it was

essentially an age of words: the world was drunk with them, as it had

once been drunk with action; and the former was the deadlier drug of the

two. He looked about him languidly, letting the facts of life filter

slowly through his faculties. The sources of energy were so benumbed in

him that he felt like a man whom long disease had reduced to

helplessness and who must laboriously begin his bodily education again.

Hate was the only passion which survived, and that was but a deaf

intransitive emotion coiled in his nature's depths.

Sickness at last brought its obliteration. He sank into gulfs of

weakness and oblivion, and when the rise of the tide floated him back to

life, it was to a life as faint and colourless as infancy. Colourless

too were the boundaries on which he looked out: the narrow enclosure of

white walls, opening on a slit of pale spring landscape. His hands lay

before him, white and helpless on the white coverlet of his bed. He

raised his eyes and saw de Crucis at his side. Then he began to

remember. There had been preceding intervals of consciousness, and in

one of them, in answer perhaps to some vaguely-uttered wish for light

and air, he had been carried out of the palace and the city to the

Benedictine monastery on its wooded knoll beyond the Piana. Then the

veil had dropped again, and his spirit had wandered in a dim place of

shades. There was a faint sweetness in coming back at last to familiar

sights and sounds. They no longer hurt like pressure on an aching nerve:

they seemed rather, now, the touch of a reassuring hand.

As the contact with life became closer and more sustained he began to

watch himself curiously, wondering what instincts and habits of thought

would survive his long mental death. It was with a bitter, almost

pitiable disappointment that he found the old man growing again in him.

Life, with a mocking hand, brought him the cast-off vesture of his past,

and he felt himself gradually compressed again into the old passions and

prejudices. Yet he wore them with a difference--they were a cramping

garment rather than a living sheath. He had brought back from his lonely

voyagings a sense of estrangement deeper than any surface-affinity with

things.

As his physical strength returned, and he was able to leave his room and

walk through the long corridors to the outer air, he felt the old spell

which the life of Monte Cassino had cast on him. The quiet garden, with

its clumps of box and lavender between paths converging to the statue of

Saint Benedict; the cloisters paved with the monks' nameless graves; the

traces of devotional painting left here and there on the weather-beaten

walls, like fragments of prayer in a world-worn mind: these formed a

circle of tranquillising influences in which he could gradually

reacquire the habit of living.

He had never deceived himself as to the cause of the riots. He knew from

Gamba and Andreoni that the liberals and the court, for once working in

unison, had provoked the blind outburst of fanaticism which a rasher

judgment might have ascribed to the clergy. The Dominicans, bigoted and

eager for power, had been ready enough to serve such an end, and some of

the begging orders had furnished the necessary points of contact with

the people; but the movement was at bottom purely political, and

represented the resistance of the privileged classes to any attack on

their inherited rights.

As such, he could no longer regard it as completely unreasonable. He was

beginning to feel the social and political significance of those old

restrictions and barriers against which his early zeal had tilted.

Certainly in the ideal state the rights and obligations of the different

classes would be more evenly adjusted. But the ideal state was a figment

of the brain. The real one, as Crescenti had long ago pointed out, was

the gradual and heterogeneous product of remote social conditions,

wherein every seeming inconsistency had its roots in some bygone need,

and the character of each class, with its special passions, ignorances

and prejudices, was the sum total of influences so ingrown and

inveterate that they had become a law of thought. All this, however,

seemed rather matter for philosophic musing than for definite action.

His predominant feeling was still that of remoteness from the immediate

issues of life: the soeva indignatio had been succeeded by a great calm.

The soothing influences of the monastic life had doubtless helped to

tide him over the stormy passage of returning consciousness. His

sensitiveness to these influences inclined him for the first time to

consider them analytically. Hitherto he had regarded the Church as a

skilfully-adjusted engine, the product of human passions scientifically

combined to obtain the greatest sum of tangible results. Now he saw that

he had never penetrated beneath the surface. For the Church which

grasped, contrived, calculated, struggled for temporal possessions and

used material weapons against spiritual foes--this outer Church was

nothing more than the body, which, like any other animal body, had to

care for its own gross needs, nourish, clothe, defend itself, fight for

a footing among the material resistances of life--while the soul, the

inner animating principle, might dwell aloof from all these things, in a

clear medium of its own.

To this soul of the Church his daily life now brought him close. He felt

it in the ordered beneficence of the great community, in the simplicity

of its external life and the richness and suavity of its inner

relations. No alliance based on material interests, no love of power

working toward a common end, could have created that harmony of thought

and act which was reflected in every face about him. Each of these men

seemed to have FOUND OUT SOMETHING of which he was still ignorant.

What it was, de Crucis tried to tell him as they paced the cloisters

together or sat in the warm stillness of the budding garden. At the

first news of the Duke's illness the Jesuit had hastened to Pianura. No

companionship could have been so satisfying to Odo. De Crucis's mental

attitude toward mankind might have been defined as an illuminated

charity. To love men, or to understand them, is not as unusual as to do

both together; and it was the intellectual acuteness of his friend's

judgments that made their Christian amenity so seductive to Odo.

"The highest claim of Christianity," the Jesuit said one morning, as

they sat on a worn stone bench at the end of the sunny vine-walk, "is

that it has come nearer to solving the problem of men's relations to

each other than any system invented by themselves. This, after all, is

the secret principle of the Church's vitality. She gave a spiritual

charter of equality to mankind long before the philosophers thought of

giving them a material one. If, all the while, she has been fighting for

dominion, arrogating to herself special privileges, struggling to

preserve the old lines of social and legal demarcation, it has been

because for nigh two thousand years she has cherished in her breast the

one free city of the spirit, because to guard its liberties she has had

to defend and strengthen her own position. I do not ask you to consider

whence comes this insight into the needs of man, this mysterious power

over him; I ask you simply to confess them in their results. I am not of

those who believe that God permits good to come to mankind through one

channel only, and I doubt not that now and in times past the thinkers

whom your Highness follows have done much to raise the condition of

their fellows; but I would have you observe that, where they have done

so, it has been because, at bottom, their aims coincided with the

Church's. The deeper you probe into her secret sources of power, the

more you find there, in the germ if you will, but still potentially

active, all those humanising energies which work together for the

lifting of the race. In her wisdom and her patience she may have seen

fit to withhold their expression, to let them seek another outlet; but

they are there, stored in her consciousness like the archetypes of the

Platonists in the Universal Mind. It is the knowledge of this, the sure

knowledge of it, which creates the atmosphere of serenity that you feel

about you. From the tilling of the vineyards, or the dressing of a

beggar's sores, to the loftiest and most complicated intellectual labour

imposed on him, each brother knows that his daily task is part of a

great scheme of action, working ever from imperfection to perfection,

from human incompleteness to the divine completion. This sense of being,

not straws on a blind wind of chance, but units in an ordered force,

gives to the humblest Christian an individual security and dignity which

kings on their thrones might envy.

"But not only does the Church anticipate every tendency of mankind;

alone of all powers she knows how to control and direct the passions she

excites. This it is which makes her an auxiliary that no temporal prince

can well despise. It is in this aspect that I would have your Highness

consider her. Do not underrate her power because it seems based on the

commoner instincts rather than on the higher faculties of man. That is

one of the sources of her strength. She can support her claims by reason

and argument, but it is because her work, like that of her divine

Founder, lies chiefly among those who can neither reason nor argue, that

she chooses to rest her appeal on the simplest and most universal

emotions. As, in our towns, the streets are lit mainly by the tapers

before the shrines of the saints, so the way of life would be dark to

the great multitude of men but for the light of faith burning within

them..."

Meanwhile the shufflings of destiny had brought to Trescorre the prize

for which he waited. During the Duke's illness he had been appointed

regent of Pianura, and his sovereign's reluctance to take up the cares

of government had now left him for six months in authority. The day

after the proclaiming of the constitution Odo had withdrawn his

signature from it, on the ground that the concessions it contained were

inopportune. The functions of government went on again in the old way.

The old abuses persisted, the old offences were condoned: it was as

though the apathy of the sovereign had been communicated to his people.

Centuries of submission were in their blood, and for two generations

there had been no warfare south of the Alps.

For the moment men's minds were turned to the great events going forward

in France. It had not yet occurred to the Italians that the recoil of

these events might be felt among themselves. They were simply amused

spectators, roused at last to the significance of the show, but never

dreaming that they might soon be called from the wings to the

footlights. To de Crucis, however, the possibility of such a call was

already present, and it was he who pressed the Duke to return to his

post. A deep reluctance held Odo back. He would have liked to linger on

in the monastery, leading the tranquil yet busy life of the monks, and

trying to read the baffling riddle of its completeness. At that moment

it seemed to him of vastly more importance to discover the exact nature

of the soul--whether it was in fact a metaphysical entity, as these men

believed, or a mere secretion of the brain, as he had been taught to

think--than to go back and govern his people. For what mattered the

rest, if he had been mistaken about the soul?

With a start he realised that he was going as his cousin had gone--that

this was but another form of the fatal lethargy that hung upon his race.

An effort of the will drew him back to Pianura, and made him resume the

semblance of authority; but it carried him no farther. Trescorre

ostensibly became prime minister, and in reality remained the head of

the state. The Duke was present at the cabinet meetings but took no part

in the direction of affairs. His mind was lost in a maze of metaphysical

speculations; and even these served him merely as some

cunningly-contrived toy with which to trick his leisure.

His revocation of the charter had necessarily separated him from Gamba

and the advanced liberals. He knew that the hunchback, ever scornful of

expediency, charged him with disloyalty to the people; but such charges

could no longer wound. The events following the Duke's birthday had

served to crystallise the schemes of the little liberal group, and they

now formed a campaign of active opposition to the government, attacking

it by means of pamphlets and lampoons, and by such public speaking as

the police allowed. The new professors of the University, ardently in

sympathy with the constitutional movement, used their lectures as means

of political teaching, and the old stronghold of dogma became the centre

of destructive criticism. But as yet these ideas formed but a single

live point in the general numbness.

Two years passed in this way. North of the Alps, all Europe was

convulsed, while Italy was still but a sleeper who tosses in his sleep.

In the two Sicilies, the arrogance and perfidy of the government gave a

few martyrs to the cause, and in Bologna there was a brief revolutionary

outbreak; but for the most part the Italian states were sinking into

inanition. Venice, by recalling her fleet from Greece, let fall the

dominion of the sea. Twenty years earlier Genoa had basely yielded

Corsica to France. The Pope condemned the French for their outrages on

religion, and his subjects murdered Basseville, the agent of the new

republic. The sympathies and impulses of the various states were as

contradictory as they were ineffectual.

Meanwhile, in France, Europe was trying to solve at a stroke the

problems of a thousand years. All the repressed passions which

civilisation had sought, however imperfectly, to curb, stalked abroad

destructive as flood and fire. The great generation of the

Encyclopaedists had passed away, and the teachings of Rousseau had

prevailed over those of Montesquieu and Voltaire. The sober sense of the

economists was swept aside by the sound and fury of the demagogues, and

France was become a very Babel of tongues. The old malady of words had

swept over the world like a pestilence.

To the little Italian courts, still dozing in fancied security under the

wing of Bourbon and Hapsburg suzerains, these rumours were borne by the

wild flight of emigres--dead leaves loosened by the first blast of the

storm. Month by month they poured across the Alps in ever-increasing

numbers, bringing confused contradictory tales of anarchy and outrage.

Among those whom chance thus carried to Pianura were certain familiars

of the Duke's earlier life--the Count Alfieri and his royal mistress,

flying from Paris, and arriving breathless with the tale of their

private injuries. To the poet of revolt this sudden realisation of his

doctrines seemed in fact a purely personal outrage. It was as though a

man writing an epic poem on an earthquake should suddenly find himself

engulphed. To Alfieri the downfall of the French monarchy and the

triumph of democratic ideas meant simply that his French investments had

shrunk to nothing, and that he, the greatest poet of the age, had been

obliged, at an immense sacrifice of personal dignity, to plead with a

drunken mob for leave to escape from Paris. To the wider aspect of the

"tragic farce," as he called it, his eyes remained obstinately closed.

He viewed the whole revolutionary movement as a conspiracy against his

comfort, and boasted that during his enforced residence in France he had

not so much as exchanged a word with one of the "French slaves,

instigators of false liberty," who, by trying to put into action the

principles taught in his previous works, had so grievously interfered

with the composition of fresh masterpieces.

The royal pretensions of the Countess of Albany--pretentions affirmed

rather than abated as the tide of revolution rose--made it impossible

that she should be received at the court of Pianura; but the Duke found

a mild entertainment in Alfieri's company. The poet's revulsion of

feeling seemed to Odo like the ironic laughter of the fates. His

thoughts returned to the midnight meetings of the Honey Bees, and to the

first vision of that face which men had lain down their lives to see.

Men had looked on that face since then, and its horror was reflected in

their own.

Other fugitives to Pianura brought another impression of events--that

comic note which life, the supreme dramatic artist, never omits from her

tragedies. These were the Duke's old friend the Marquis de Coeur-Volant,

fleeing from his chateau as the peasants put the torch to it, and

arriving in Pianura destitute, gouty and middle-aged, but imperturbable

and epigrammatic as ever. With him came his Marquise, a dark-eyed lady,

stout to unwieldiness and much given to devotion, in whom it was

whispered (though he introduced her as the daughter of a Venetian

Senator) that a reminiscent eye might still detect the outline of the

gracefullest Columbine who had ever flitted across the Italian stage.

These visitors were lodged by the Duke's kindness in the Palazzo

Cerveno, near the ducal residence; and though the ladies of Pianura were

inclined to look askance on the Marquise's genealogy, yet his Highness's

condescension, and her own edifying piety, had soon allayed these

scruples, and the salon of Madame de Coeur-Volant became the rival of

Madame d'Albany's.

It was, in fact, the more entertaining of the two; for, in spite of his

lady's austere views, the Marquis retained that gift of social

flexibility that was already becoming the tradition of a happier day. To

the Marquis, indeed, the revolution was execrable not so much because of

the hardships it inflicted, as because it was the forerunner of social

dissolution--the breaking-up of the regime which had made manners the

highest morality, and conversation the chief end of man. He could have

lived gaily on a crust in good company and amid smiling faces; but the

social deficiencies of Pianura were more difficult to endure than any

material privation. In Italy, as the Marquis had more than once

remarked, people loved, gambled, wrote poetry, and patronised the arts;

but, alas, they did not converse. Coeur-Volant could not conceal from

his Highness that there was no conversation in Pianura; but he did his

best to fill the void by the constant exercise of his own gift in that

direction, and to Odo at least his talk seemed as good as it was

copious. Misfortune had given a finer savour to the Marquis's

philosophy, and there was a kind of heroic grace in his undisturbed

cultivation of the amenities.

While the Marquis was struggling to preserve the conversational art, and

Alfieri planning the savage revenge of the Misogallo, the course of

affairs in France had gained a wilder impetus. The abolition of the

nobility, the flight and capture of the King, his enforced declaration

of war against Austria, the massacres of Avignon, the sack of the

Tuileries--such events seemed incredible enough till the next had

crowded them out of mind. The new year rose in blood and mounted to a

bloodier noon. All the old defences were falling. Religion, monarchy,

law, were sucked down into the whirlpool of liberated passions. Across

that sanguinary scene passed, like a mocking ghost, the philosophers'

vision of the perfectibility of man. Man was free at last--freer than

his would-be liberators had ever dreamed of making him--and he used his

freedom like a beast. For the multitude had risen--that multitude which

no man could number, which even the demagogues who ranted in its name

had never seriously reckoned with--that dim, grovelling

indistinguishable mass on which the whole social structure rested. It

was as though the very soil moved, rising in mountains or yawning in

chasms about the feet of those who had so long securely battened on it.

The earth shook, the sun and moon were darkened, and the people, the

terrible unknown people, had put in the sickle to the harvest.

Italy roused herself at last. The emissaries of the new France were

swarming across the Alps, pervading the peninsula as the Jesuits had

once pervaded Europe; and in the mind of a young general of the

republican army visions of Italian conquest were already forming. In

Pianura the revolutionary agents found a strong republican party headed

by Gamba and his friends, and a government weakened by debt and

dissensions. The air was thick with intrigue. The little army could no

longer be counted on, and a prolonged bread-riot had driven Trescorre

out of the ministry and compelled the Duke to appoint Andreoni in his

place. Behind Andreoni stood Gamba and the radicals. There could be no

doubt which way the fortunes of the duchy tended. The Duke's would-be

protectors, Austria and the Holy See, were too busy organising the hasty

coalition of the powers to come to his aid, had he cared to call on

them. But to do so would have been but another way of annihilation. To

preserve the individuality of his state, or to merge it in the vision of

a United Italy, seemed to him the only alternatives worth fighting for.

The former was a futile dream, the latter seemed for a brief moment

possible. Piedmont, ever loyal to the monarchical principle, was calling

on her sister states to arm themselves against the French invasion. But

the response was reluctant and uncertain. Private ambitions and petty

jealousies hampered every attempt at union. Austria, the Bourbons and

the Holy See held the Italian principalities in a network of conflicting

interests and obligations that rendered free action impossible. Sadly

Victor Amadeus armed himself alone against the enemy.

Under such conditions Odo could do little to direct the course of

events. They had passed into more powerful hands than his. But he could

at least declare himself for or against the mighty impulse which was

behind them. The ideas he had striven for had triumphed at last, and his

surest hold on authority was to share openly in their triumph. A

profound horror dragged him back. The new principles were not those for

which he had striven. The goddess of the new worship was but a bloody

Maenad who had borrowed the attributes of freedom. He could not bow the

knee in such a charnel-house. Tranquilly, resolutely, he took up the

policy of repression. He knew the attempt was foredoomed to failure, but

that made no difference now: he was simply acting out the inevitable.

The last act came with unexpected suddenness. The Duke woke one morning

to find the citadel in the possession of the people. The impregnable

stronghold of Bracciaforte was in the hands of the serfs whose fathers

had toiled to build it, and the last descendant of Bracciaforte was

virtually a prisoner in his palace. The revolution took place quietly,

without violence or bloodshed. Andreoni waited on the Duke, and a

cabinet-council was summoned. The ministers affected to have yielded

reluctantly to popular pressure. All they asked was a constitution and

the assurance that no resistance would be offered to the French.

The Duke requested a few hours for deliberation. Left alone, he summoned

the Duchess's chamberlain. The ducal pair no longer met save on

occasions of state: they had not exchanged a word since the death of

Fulvia Vivaldi. Odo sent word to her Highness that he could no longer

answer for her security while she remained in the duchy, and that he

begged her to leave immediately for Vienna. She replied that she was

obliged for his warning, but that while he remained in Pianura her place

was at his side. It was the answer he had expected--he had never doubted

her courage--but it was essential to his course that she should leave

the duchy without delay, and after a moment's reflection he wrote a

letter in which he informed her that he must insist on her obedience. No

answer was returned, but he learned that she had turned white, and

tearing the letter in shreds had called for her travelling-carriage

within the hour. He sent to enquire when he might take leave of her, but

she excused herself on the plea of indisposition, and before nightfall

he heard the departing rattle of her wheels.

He immediately summoned Andreoni and announced his unconditional refusal

of the terms proposed to him. He would not give a constitution or

promise allegiance to the French. The minister withdrew, and Odo was

left alone. He had dismissed his gentlemen, and as he sat in his closet

a sense of deathlike isolation came over him. Never had the palace

seemed so silent or so vast. He had not a friend to turn to. De Crucis

was in Germany, and Trescorre, it was reported, had privately attended

the Duchess in her flight. The waves of destiny seemed closing over Odo,

and the circumstances of his past rose, poignant and vivid, before his

drowning sight.

And suddenly, in that moment of failure and abandonment, it seemed to

him again that life was worth the living. His indifference fell from him

like a garment. The old passion of action awoke and he felt a new warmth

in his breast. After all, the struggle was not yet over: though Piedmont

had called in vain on the Italian states, an Italian sword might still

be drawn in her service. If his people would not follow him against

France he could still march against her alone. Old memories hummed in

him at the thought. He recalled how his Piedmontese ancestors had gone

forth against the same foe, and the stout Donnaz blood began to bubble

in his veins.

A knock roused him and Gamba entered by the private way. His appearance

was not unexpected to Odo, and served only to reinforce his new-found

energy. He felt that the issue was at hand. As he expected, Gamba had

been sent to put before him more forcibly and unceremoniously the veiled

threat of the ministers. But the hunchback had come also to plead with

his master in his own name, and in the name of the ideas for which they

had once laboured together. He could not believe that the Duke's

reaction was more than momentary. He could not calculate the strength of

the old associations which, now that the tide had set the other way,

were dragging Odo back to the beliefs and traditions of his caste.

The Duke listened in silence; then he said: "Discussion is idle. I have

no answer to give but that which I have already given." He rose from his

seat in token of dismissal.

The moment was painful to both men. Gamba drew nearer and fell at the

Duke's feet.

"Your Highness," he said, "consider what this means. We hold the state

in our hands. If you are against us you are powerless. If you are with

us we can promise you more power than you ever dreamed of possessing."

The Duke looked at him with a musing smile. "It is as though you offered

me gold in a desert island," he said. "Do not waste such poor bribes on

me. I care for no power but the power to wipe out the work of these last

years. Failing that, I want nothing that you or any other man can give."

Gamba was silent a moment. He turned aside into the embrasure of the

window, and when he spoke again it was in a voice broken with grief.

"Your Highness," he said, "if your choice is made, ours is made also. It

is a hard choice, but these are fratricidal hours. We have come to the

parting of the ways."

The Duke made no sign, and Gamba went on with gathering anguish: "We

would have gone to the world's end with your Highness for our leader!"

"With a leader whom you could lead," Odo interposed. He went up to Gamba

and laid a hand on his shoulder. "Speak out, man," he said. "Say what

you were sent to say. Am I a prisoner?"

The hunchback burst into tears. Odo, with his arms crossed, stood

leaning against the window. The other's anguish seemed to deepen his

detachment.

"Your Highness--your Highness--" Gamba stammered.

The Duke made an impatient gesture. "Come, make an end," he said.

Gamba fell back with a profound bow.

"We do not ask the surrender of your Highness's person," he said.

"Not even that?" Odo returned with a faint sneer.

Gamba flushed to the temples, but the retort died on his lips.

"Your Highness," he said, scarce above a whisper, "the gates are

guarded; but the word for tonight is 'Humilitas.'" He knelt and kissed

Odo's hand. Then he rose and passed out of the room...

* * * * *

Before dawn the Duke left the palace. The high emotions of the night had

ebbed. He saw himself now, in the ironic light of morning, as a fugitive

too harmless to be worth pursuing. His enemies had let him keep his

sword because they had no cause to fear it. Alone he passed through the

gardens of the palace, and out into the desert darkness of the streets.

Skirting the wall of the Benedictine convent where Fulvia had lodged, he

gained a street leading to the marketplace. In the pallor of the waning

night the ancient monuments of his race stood up mournful and deserted

as a line of tombs. The city seemed a grave-yard and he the ineffectual

ghost of its dead past. He reached the gates and gave the watchword. The

gates were guarded, as he had been advised; but the captain of the watch

let him pass without show of hesitation or curiosity. Though he made no

effort at disguise he went forth unrecognised, and the city closed her

doors on him as carelessly as on any passing wanderer.

Beyond the gates a lad from the ducal stables waited with a horse. Odo

sprang into the saddle and rode on toward Pontesordo. The darkness was

growing thinner, and the meagre details of the landscape, with its

huddled farm-houses and mulberry-orchards, began to define themselves as

he advanced. To his left the field stretched, grey and sodden; ahead, on

his right, hung the dark woods of the ducal chase. Presently a bend of

the road brought him within sight of the keep of Pontesordo. His way led

past it, toward Valsecca; but some obscure instinct laid a detaining

hand on him, and at the cross-roads he bent to the right and rode across

the marshland to the old manor-house.

The farmyard lay hushed and deserted. The peasants who lived there would

soon be afoot; but for the moment Odo had the place to himself. He

tethered his horse to a gate-post and walked across the rough

cobble-stones to the chapel. Its floor was still heaped with farm-tools

and dried vegetables, and in the dimness a heavier veil of dust seemed

to obscure the painted walls. Odo advanced, picking his way among broken

ploughshares and stacks of maize, till he stood near the old marble

altar, with its sea-gods and acanthus volutes. The place laid its

tranquillising hush on him, and he knelt on the step beneath the altar.

Something stirred in him as he knelt there--a prayer, yet not a

prayer--a reaching out, obscure and inarticulate, toward all that had

survived of his early hopes and faiths, a loosening of old founts of

pity, a longing to be somehow, somewhere reunited to his old belief in

life.

How long he knelt he knew not; but when he looked up the chapel was full

of a pale light, and in the first shaft of the sunrise the face of Saint

Francis shone out on him...He went forth into the daybreak and rode away

toward Piedmont.