The travellers were to journey by Vettura from Chivasso to Turin; andwhen Odo woke next morning the carriage stood ready in the courtyard.
Cantapresto, mottled and shamefaced, with his bands awry and an air oftottering dignity, was gathering their possessions together, and thepretty girl who had pillowed Odo's slumbers now knelt by his bed andlaughingly drew on his stockings. She was a slim brown morsel, not muchabove his age, with a glance that flitted like a bird, and roundshoulders slipping out of her kerchief. A wave of shyness bathed Odo tothe forehead as their eyes met: he hung his head stupidly and turnedaway when she fetched the comb to dress his hair.
His toilet completed, she called out to the abate to go below and seethat the cavaliere's chocolate was ready; and as the door closed sheturned and kissed Odo on the lips.
"Oh, how red you are!" she cried laughing. "Is that the first kissyou've ever had? Then you'll remember me when you're Duke ofPianura--Mirandolina of Chioggia, the first girl you ever kissed!" Shewas pulling his collar straight while she talked, so that he could notget away from her. "You will remember me, won't you?" she persisted. "Ishall be a great actress by that time, and you'll appoint me primaamorosa to the ducal theatre of Pianura, and throw me a diamond braceletfrom your Highness's box and make all the court ladies ready to poisonme for rage!" She released his collar and dropped away from him. "Ah,no, I shall be a poor strolling player, and you a great prince," shesighed, "and you'll never, never think of me again; but I shall alwaysremember that I was the first girl you ever kissed!"She hung back in a dazzle of tears, looking so bright and tender thatOdo's bashfulness melted like a spring frost.
"I shall never be Duke," he cried, "and I shall never forget you!" Andwith that he turned and kissed her boldly and then bolted down thestairs like a hare. And all that day he scorched and froze with thethought that perhaps she had been laughing at him.
Cantapresto was torpid after the feast, and Odo detected in him an airof guilty constraint. The boy was glad enough to keep silence, and theyrolled on without speaking through the wide glowing landscape. Alreadythe nearness of a great city began to make itself felt. The brightchampaign was scattered over with farm-houses, their red-tiledpigeon-cots and their granges latticed with openwork terra-cottapleasantly breaking the expanse of maize and mulberry; villages layalong the banks of the canals intersecting the plain; and the hillsbeyond the Po were planted with villas and monasteries.
All the afternoon they drove between umbrageous parks and under thewalls of terraced vineyards. It was a region of delectable shade, withglimpses here and there of gardens flashing with fountains and villaroofs decked with statues and vases; and at length, toward sunset, abend of the road brought them out on a fair-spreading city, soflourishing in buildings, so beset with smiling hills, that Odo,springing from his seat, cried out in sheer joy of the spectacle.
They had still the suburbs to traverse; and darkness was falling whenthey entered the gates of Turin. This brought the fresh amazement ofwide lamplit streets, clean and bright as a ball-room, lined withpalaces and filled with well-dressed loungers: officers in the brilliantSardinian uniforms, fine gentlemen in French tie-wigs and narrow-sleevedcoats, merchants hurrying home from business, ecclesiastics inhigh-swung carriages, and young bloods dashing by in their curricles.
The tables before the coffee-houses were thronged with idlers takingtheir chocolate and reading the gazettes; and here and there the archeddoorway of a palace showed some gay party supping al fresco in a gardenhung with lamps.
The flashing of lights and the noise of the streets roused Cantapresto,who sat up with a sudden assumption of dignity.
"Ah, cavaliere," said he, "you now see a great city, a famous city, acity aptly called 'the Paris of Italy.' Nowhere else shall you find suchwell-lit streets, such fair pavements, shops so full of Parisian wares,promenades so crowded with fine carriages and horses. What a life ayoung gentleman may lead here! The court is hospitable, society amiable,the theatres are the best-appointed in Italy."Here Cantapresto paused with a deprecating cough.
"Only one thing is necessary," he went on, "to complete enjoyment of thefruits of this garden of Eden; and that is"--he coughedagain--"discretion. His Majesty, cavaliere, is a father to his subjects;the Church is their zealous mother; and between two such parents, andthe innumerable delegates of their authority, why, you may fancy, sir,that a man has to wear his eyes on all sides of his head. Discretion isa virtue the Church herself commends; it is natural, then, that sheshould afford her children full opportunity to practise it. And lookyou, cavaliere, it is like gymnastics: the younger you acquire it, theless effort it costs. Our Maker Himself has taught us the value ofsilence by putting us speechless into the world: if we learn to talklater we do it at our own risk! But for your own part, cavaliere--sincethe habit cannot too early be exercised--I would humbly counsel you tosay nothing to your illustrious parents of our little diversion of lastevening."The Countess Valdu lived on the upper floor of a rococo palace near thePiazza San Carlo; and here Odo, led by Cantapresto, presently foundhimself shown into an apartment where several ladies and gentlemen satat cards. His mother, detaching herself from the group, embraced himwith unusual warmth, and the old Count, more painted and perfumed thanever, hurried up with an obsequious greeting. Odo for the first timefound himself of consequence in the world; and as he was passed fromguest to guest, questioned about his journey, praised for his goodcolour and stout looks, complimented on his high prospects, andlaughingly entreated not to forget his old friends when fortune shouldadvance him to the duchy, he began to feel himself a reigning potentatealready.
His mother, as he soon learned, had sunk into a life almost as dull andrestricted as that she had left Donnaz to escape. Count Valdu's positionat court was more ornamental than remunerative, the income from hisestates was growing annually smaller, and he was involved in costlylitigation over the sale of some entailed property. Such conditions werelittle to the Countess's humour, and the society to which her narrowmeans confined her offered few distractions to her vanity. Thefrequenters of the house were chiefly poor relations and hangers-on ofthe Count's, the parasites who in those days were glad to subsist on thecrumbs of the slenderest larder. Half-a-dozen hungry Countesses, theirlean admirers, a superannuated abate or two, and a flock of threadbareecclesiastics, made up Donna Laura's circle; and even her cicisbeo,selected in family council under the direction of her confessor, was anaustere gentleman of middle age, who collected ancient coins and wasengaged in composing an essay on the Martellian verse.
This company, which devoted hours to the new French diversion of theparfilage, and spent the evenings in drinking lemonade and playingbasset for small stakes, found its chief topic of conversation in theonly two subjects safely discussed in Turin at that day--the doings ofthe aristocracy and of the clergy. The fashion of the Queen's headdressat the last circle, the marked manner in which his Majesty had latelydistinguished the brilliant young cavalry officer, Count Roberto diTournanches, the third marriage of the Countess Alfieri of Asti, theincredibility of the rumour that the court ladies of Versailles hadtaken to white muslin and Leghorn hats, the probable significance of theVicar-general's visit to Rome, the subject of the next sacredrepresentation to be given by the nuns of Santa Croce--such were thequestions that engaged the noble frequenters of Casa Valdu.
This was the only society that Donna Laura saw; for she was too poor todress to her taste and too proud to show herself in public without theappointments becoming her station. Her sole distraction consisted invisits to the various shrines--the Sudario, the Consolata, the CorpusDomini--at which the feminine aristocracy offered up its devotions andimplored absolution for sins it had often no opportunity to commit: forthough fashion accorded cicisbei to the fine ladies of Turin, the Churchusually restricted their intercourse to the exchange of the mostharmless amenities.
Meanwhile the antechamber was as full of duns as the approach to DonnaLaura's apartment at Pianura; and Odo guessed that the warmth of thematernal welcome sprang less from natural affection than from the hopeof using his expectations as a sop to her creditors. The pittance whichthe ducal treasury allowed for his education was scarce large enough tobe worth diverting to other ends; but a potential prince is a shield tothe most vulnerable fortunes. In this character Odo for the first timefound himself flattered, indulged, and made the centre of the company.
The contrast to his life of subjection at Donnaz; the precociousinitiation into motives that tainted the very fount of filial piety; thetaste of this mingled draught of adulation and disillusionment, mighthave perverted a nature more self-centred than his. From thisperversion, and from many subsequent perils he was saved by a kind ofimaginative sympathy, a wondering joy in the mere spectacle of life,that tinged his most personal impressions with a streak of thephilosophic temper. If this trait did not save him from sorrow, it atleast lifted him above pettiness; if it could not solve the difficultiesof life it could arm him to endure them. It was the best gift of thepast from which he sprang; but it was blent with another quality, a deepmoral curiosity that ennobled his sensuous enjoyment of the outward showof life; and these elements were already tending in him, as in countlessyouths of his generation, to the formation of a new spirit, the spiritthat was to destroy one world without surviving to create another.
Of all this none could have been less conscious than the lad justpreparing to enter on his studies at the Royal Academy of Turin. Thatinstitution, adjoining the royal palace, was a kind of nursery orforcing-house for the budding nobility of Savoy. In one division of thesumptuous building were housed his Majesty's pages, a corps of luxuriousindolent young fops; another wing accommodated the regular students ofthe Academy, sons of noblemen and gentlemen destined for the secularlife, while a third was set aside for the "forestieri" or students fromforeign countries and from the other Italian states. To this quarter OdoValsecca was allotted; though it was understood that on leaving theAcademy he was to enter the Sardinian service.
It was customary for a young gentleman of Odo's rank to be attended atthe Academy not only by a body-servant but by a private governor orpedant, whose business it was to overlook his studies, attend himabroad, and have an eye to the society he frequented. The old Marquessof Donnaz had sent his daughter, by Odo's hand, a letter recommendingher to select her son's governor with particular care, choosing rather aperson of grave behaviour and assured morality than one of your glibink-spatterers who may know the inside of all the folios in the King'slibrary without being the better qualified for the direction of a younggentleman's conduct; and to this letter Don Gervaso appended the tersepostcript: "Your excellency is especially warned against according thisor any other position of trust to the merry-andrew who calls himself theabate Cantapresto."Donna Laura, with a shrug, handed the letter to her husband; CountValdu, adjusting his glasses, observed it was notorious that peopleliving in the depths of the country thought themselv............