9.

took the little boy by the hand. "Would it not distract your mind to recite the catechism?" he enquired.

"No, no," cried Odo with redoubled sobs.

"Well, then, as you will. What a madman!" he ex-claimed to Filomena. "I warrent it hasn't seen its father three times in its life.--- Come in, cavaliere, come to supper."

Filomena, with much agitation and repeated shakings of the frightened foundling, had lain a table in the stone chamber known as the bailiff's parlour; and thither the abate dragged his charge and set him down before the coarse table-cloth covered with earthen platters. A tallow dip in a pewter candle-stick threw its yellow flare on the abate's big aquiline face as he sat opposite Odo, gulping the hastily prepared frittura and the thick purple wine in its wicker flask. Odo could eat nothing. The tears still ran down his cheeks and his whole soul was possessed by the longing to steal back and see whether the figure of the knight in the scarlet cloak had vanished from the chapel-wall. The abate ate in silence, gobbling his food like the old black pig in the yard; when he had finished he stood up, exclaiming, "Death comes to us all,! You must be a man;" then he stepped into the kitchen and called out for the horses to be put to. The farm-hands had slunk away to one of the out-houses and Filomena and Jacopone stood bowing and courtseying as the carriage drew up at the kitchen-door. In a dim corner of the big vaulted room the little foundling, white and ragged, was washing the dishes, heaping the scraps in a bowl for herself and the fowls. Odo ran back and touched her arm. She gave a start and looked at him with frightened eyes. He had nothing to give her, but he said

3

19.

Borromèni
tect Carlo Fontana; and this accomplished designer had at the same
time replanted and enlarged the ducal gardens. To Odo, who had
never seen plantations more artful than the vineyards and mulberry
orchards about Pontesordo, these cunningly interlaced perspectives
of clipped beech-and yew, these knots of box filled in with multi-
coloured sand, appeared, with the fountains, colonnades, and trellis-
ed arbours surmounted by globes of glass, to represent the very
pattern and Paradise of gardens. It seemed indeed too beautiful to
be real, and he trembled, as he sometimes did at the music of the
tradition of the Easter mass, when the hunch-back, laughing at his amazement, led him
down the terrace steps.

It was Odo's lot, in after years, to walk the alleys of many a
splendid garden, and to pace, often wearily enough, the paths along
which he was now led; but never after did he renew the first en-
chanted impression of mystery and brightness which remained with him
as the most vivid emotion of his childhood.

Though it was February the season was so soft that
the orange and lemon trees had been put out in their earthen vases
before the lemon-house, and the beds in the parterres were full of
violets, daffodils and auriculas; but the scent of the orange-blos-
soms and the bright colours of the flowers moved Odo less than the
noble ordonnance of the pleached alleys, each terminated by a sta-
tue or a marble seat; and when he came to the semi-circular grotto,
where, amid rearing sea-horses and Tritons, a cascade poured from the
grove above, his wonder passed into such delicious awe as hung
him speechless on the hunch-back's hand.

"Eh," said the latter with a sneer, "it's a finer gar-

28.

foundling hospital; and he had a sudden vision of her little dirty
bare feet, pinched with cold and cut with the pebbles of the yard,
perpetually running across the damp stone floors on Ptilomena's
errands. He had almost resolved to speak of the foundling to his
mother, who still seemed in a condescending humour; but his atten-
tion was unexpectedly distracted by a troop of Egyptians, who came
along the road leading a dancing bear; and hardly had these passed
when the chariot of an itinerant dentist engaged him. The whole
way, indeed, was alive with such surprises; and at Valsecca, where
they dined, they found the filthy yard of the inn crowded with the
sumpter-mules and servants of a cardinal travelling to Rome, who was
to lie there that night, and whose bedstead and sauce-pans had pre-
ceded him.

Here, after dinner, Don Lelio took leave of Odo's
mother, with small show of regret on either side; the lady high and
sarcastic, the gentleman sullen and polite; and both, as it seemed,
easier when the business was despatched and the Count's foot in the
stirrup. He had so far taken little notice of Odo, but he now bent
from the saddle and tapped the boy's cheek, saying in his cold way:
"In a few years I shall see you at court—" and with that, baring
his head to her excellency, rode away toward Pianura.

48.

cence and had she informed him that she was to be chained, on bread and water, in the lowest den of the keep; Odo would have accepted the fact with equal philosophy. Three weeks later his mother and the old count were married in the chapel of Donnaz, and Donna Laura, with many tears and embraces, set out for Turin, taking her monkey but leaving her son behind.

Her departure left no traces but were speedily repaired by the coming of spring. The sun growing warmer, and the close season putting an end to the Marquess's hunting, it was now Odo's chief pleasure to carry his books to the walled garden between the castle and the southern face of the cliff. This small enclosure, probably an unchanged survival of mediaeval horticulture, had along the upper ledge of its wall a grass-walk commanding the flow of the stream, and an angle-turret that turned one slit to the valley, the other to the garden lying below like a tranquil well of scent and brightness; its box-trees clipped to the shape of peacocks and lions, its clove-pinks and simples set in a border of thrift, and an espaliered pear-tree basking on its sunny wall. These pleasant spaces, which Odo had to himself save when the Canonesses walked there to recite their rosary, he peopled with the knights and ladies of the novelle, and the fantastic beings of Pulci's epic: there walked the fay Morgana, Regulus the loyal knight, the giant Morgante, Trajan the just Emperor, and the proud figure of King Conrad; so that, escaping thither from the after-dinner dulness of the tapestry parlour, the boy seemed to pass from the most oppressive solitude to a world of warmth and fellowship.

48.

cence and had she informed him that she was to be chained, on bread and water, in the lowest den of the keep, Odo would have accepted the fact with equal philosophy. Three weeks later his mother and the old count were married in the chapel of Donnaz, and Donna Laura, with many tears and embraces, set out for Turin, taking her monkey

but
and
she
did
all
the
rest
of
the
day

brightness; its box-trees clipped to the shape of peacocks and lions,
its clove-pinks and simples set in a border of thrift, and an es-
paliered pear-tree basking on its sunny wall. These pleasant spaces,
which Odo had to himself save when the Canonesses walked there to
recite their rosary, he peopled with the knights and ladies of the
novelle, and the fantastic beings of Pulci's epic: there walked the
fay Morgana, Regulus the loyal knight, the giant Morgante, Trajan the just
Emperor, and the proud figure of King Conrad; so that, escaping
thither from the after-dinner dulness of the tapestry parlour, the
boy seemed to pass from the most oppressive solitude to a world of
warmth and fellowship.

60.

which you see me; a state," he added with emotion, "that I have tra-
velled this long way to commend to the adorable pity of Her whose
Son had not where to lay his head."

This stroke visibly touched the Canonesses, still
soft from the macerations of the morning; and Donna Livia compassion-
ately enquired how he had subsisted since his rupture with the
Bishop.

"Madam, by the sale of my talents in any service not
at odds with my calling: as the compiling of pious almanacks, the
inditing of rhymed litanies and canticles, and even the construction
of theatrical pieces—" the ladies lifted hands of reprobation—
"of theatrical pieces," Cantapresto impressively repeated, "for the
use of the Carmelite nuns of Pianura. But," says he with a depre-
cating smile, "the wages of virtue are less liberal than those of
sin, and spite of a versatility I think I may honestly claim, I have
often had to subsist on the gifts of the pious, and sometimes, Madam,
to starve on their compassion."

This ready discourse, and the soprano's evident dis-
tress, so worked on the Canonesses that, having little money at
their disposal, it was fixed, after some private consultation, that
he should accompany them to Donnaz, where Don Gervaso, in consider-
ation of his edifying conduct in renouncing the stage, might be
interested in helping him to a situation; and when the little party
set forth from Oropa, the abate Cantepresto, mounted on one of the
baggage-mules, ~~impressively closed the procession.~~
*closed to the procession*

Good fortune loosened the poor soprano's tongue and as soon as the
Canonesses' litter was a safe distance ahead he began to beguile

80.

Meanwhile he found himself in a confusion of preparations: measured for new clothes, (for the foreign students, being quartered with the pages, were compelled to a certain elegancy of dress and appointments) tortured by the barber and the bootmaker and subjected to the ~~unwilling examinations.~~ It was customary for a young gentleman of Odo's rank to be attended at the Academy not only by a body-servant but by a private governor or pedant, whose business it was to overlook his studies, attend him abroad, and have an eye to the society he frequented.

The old Marquess of Donnaz had sent his daughter, by Odo's hand, a letter recommending her to select her son's governor with particular care, choosing rather a person of grave behaviour and assured morality than one of your glib ink-spatterers who may know the inside of all the folios in the King's library without being the better qualified for the direction of a young gentleman's conduct; and to this letter Don Gervaso appended the terse postscript: "Your excellency is especially warned against according this or any other position of trust to the merry-andrew who calls himself the abate Cantapresto."

Donna Laura, with a shrug, handed the letter to her husband; Count Valdu, adjusting his glasses, observed it was noteworthy that people living in the depths of the country thought themselves qualified to instruct their city relatives on all points connected with the social usages; and the cicisbeo suggested that he could recommend an abate who was proficient in the construction of the Martellian verse, and who would make no extra charge for that accomplishment.

86.

86.

girlish disguise, while Deidamia as adroitly strives to conceal his identity; the scenic beauties of the background, shifting from sculpture-gallery to pleasance, from pleasance to torchlit banquet-hall; the pomp and glitter of the royal train, the melting graces of Deidamia and her maidens; seemed, in their multiple appeal to Odo's senses and imagination, to develop in him new faculties of perception. It was his first initiation into Italian poetry, and the rapid numbers, now broken, harsh and passionate, now flowing into liquid sweetness, were so blent with sound and colour that he scarce knew through which sense they reached him. Deidamia's strophes thrilled him like the singing-girl's kiss, and at the young hero's cry—

Put this quotation in the middle of the page
his fists tightened and the blood hummed in his ears.

In the great scene of the banquet-hall, where the followers of Ulysses lay before Lycomedes the offerings of the Greek chieftains, and, while the King and Deidamia are marvelling at the jewels and the Tyrian robes, Achilles, unmindful of his disguise, irresistibly bursts out

middle of page — Ah, chi vide finora più belle? —
again turned to

at this supreme point Odo again caught the eye of his red-haired
neighbour. They exchanged another look, and at the close of the
act the youth leaned forward to ask with an air of condescension:
"Is this your first acquaintance with the divine Metastasio?"

"I have never been in a play-house before," said Odo reddening.

9

93.

interest. The kind old man doubtless knew that he represented to Vittorio only the rich uncle whose crotchets must be humoured for the sake of the diversions his pocket may procure; and such tolerance of the youth whom made Odo the more regretful that it should not at least effect an interest in his uncle's pursuits.

Odo's eagerness to see and learn filled Count Benedetto with a simple joy. He brought forth all his treasures for the boy's instruction and the two spent many an afternoon among the portfolios of the Count's library, poring over Piranesi's Roman etchings, Maffei's Verona Illustrata, and Count Benedetto's own elegant pencil-drawings of classical remains. Like all students of his day, the Count had also his cabinet of antique gems and coins, from which Odo obtained more intimate glimpses of that buried life so marvellously exhumed before him: hints of traffic in far-off market-places and familiar gestures of hands on which those very jewels might have sparkled. Nor was the Count satisfied to restrict the boy's enquiries to that distant past; and for the first time Odo heard the reverent enumeration of the masters who had maintained the great classical tradition on Latin soil: Sanmichele, Vignola, Sansovino, and the divine Michael Angelo, whom the old architect never named without baring his head. From Count Benedetto's drawings of the works of these architects, Odo, living in a city of recocciu'l'iche and palaces, formed his first conception of the earlier, more virile manner which the first contact with Graeco-Roman antiquity had produced. The Count told him, too, of the great painters whose popularity had been lessened, if their fame had