The gleam of a lantern woke Odo. The horses had stopped at the gates ofPianura, and the abate giving the pass-word, the carriage rolled underthe gatehouse and continued its way over the loud cobble-stones of theducal streets. These streets were so dark, being lit but by some lanternprojecting here and there from the angle of a wall, or by the flare ofan oil-lamp under a shrine, that Odo, leaning eagerly out, could onlynow and then catch a sculptured palace-window, the grinning mask on thekeystone of an archway, or the gleaming yellowish facade of a churchinlaid with marbles. Once or twice an uncurtained window showed a groupof men drinking about a wineshop table, or an artisan bending over hiswork by the light of a tallow dip; but for the most part doors andwindows were barred and the streets disturbed only by the watchman's cryor by a flash of light and noise as a sedan chair passed with its escortof linkmen and servants. All this was amazing enough to the sleepy eyesof the little boy so unexpectedly translated from the solitude ofPontesordo; but when the carriage turned under another arch and drew upbefore the doorway of a great building ablaze with lights, the pressureof accumulated emotions made him fling his arms about his preceptor'sneck.
"Courage, cavaliere, courage! You have duties, you haveresponsibilities," the abate admonished him; and Odo, choking back hisfright, suffered himself to be lifted out by one of the lacqueys groupedabout the door. The abate, who carried a much lower crest than atPontesordo, and seemed far more anxious to please the servants than theyto oblige him, led the way up a shining marble staircase where beggarswhined on the landings and powdered footmen in the ducal livery wererunning to and fro with trays of refreshments. Odo, who knew that hismother lived in the Duke's palace, had vaguely imagined that hisfather's death must have plunged its huge precincts into silence andmourning; but as he followed the abate up successive flights of stairsand down long corridors full of shadow he heard a sound of dance musicbelow and caught the flash of girandoles through the antechamber doors.
The thought that his father's death had made no difference to any one inthe palace was to the child so much more astonishing than any of theother impressions crowding his brain, that these were scarcely felt, andhe passed as in a dream through rooms where servants were quarrellingover cards and waiting-women rummaged in wardrobes full of perfumedfinery, to a bedchamber in which a lady dressed in weeds satdisconsolately at supper.
"Mamma! Mamma!" he cried, springing forward in a passion of tears.
The lady, who was young, pale and handsome, pushed back her chair with awarning hand.
"Child," she exclaimed, "your shoes are covered with mud; and, goodheavens, how you smell of the stable! Abate, is it thus you teach yourpupil to approach me?""Madam, I am abashed by the cavaliere's temerity. But in truth I believeexcessive grief has clouded his wits--'tis inconceivable how he mournshis father!"Donna Laura's eyebrows rose in a faint smile. "May he never have worseto grieve for!" said she in French; then, extending her scented hand tothe little boy, she added solemnly: "My son, we have suffered anirreparable loss."Odo, abashed by her rebuke and the abate's apology, had drawn his heelstogether in a rustic version of the low bow with which the children ofthat day were taught to approach their parents.
"Holy Virgin!" said his mother with a laugh, "I perceive they have nodancing-master at Pontesordo. Cavaliere, you may kiss my hand.
So--that's better; we shall make a gentleman of you yet. But what makesyour face so wet? Ah, crying, to be sure. Mother of God! as for crying,there's enough to cry about." She put the child aside and turned to thepreceptor. "The Duke refuses to pay," she said with a shrug of despair.
"Good heavens!" lamented the abate, raising his hands. "And Don Lelio?"he faltered.
She shrugged again, impatiently. "As great a gambler as my husband.
They're all alike, abate: six times since last Easter has the bill beensent to me for that trifle of a turquoise buckle he made such a to-doabout giving me." She rose and began to pace the room in disorder. "I'ma ruined woman," she cried, "and it's a disgrace for the Duke to refuseme."The abate raised an admonishing finger. "Excellency...excellency..."She glanced over her shoulder.
"Eh? You're right. Everything is heard here. But who's to pay for mymourning the saints alone know! I sent an express this morning to myfather, but you know my brothers bleed him like leeches. I could havegot this easily enough from the Duke a year ago--it's his marriage hasmade him so stiff. That little white-faced fool--she hates me becauseLelio won't look at her, and she thinks it's my fault. As if I caredwhom he looks at! Sometimes I think he has money put away...all I wantis two hundred ducats...a woman of my rank!" She turned suddenly on Odo,who stood, very small and frightened, in the corner to which she hadpushed him. "What are you staring at, child? Eh! the monkey is droppingwith sleep. Look at his eyes, abate! Here, Vanna, Tonina, to bed withhim; he may sleep with you in my dressing-closet, Tonina. Go with her,child, go; but for God's sake wake him if he snores. I'm too ill to havemy rest disturbed." And she lifted a pomander to her nostrils.
The next few days dwelt in Odo's memory as a blur of strange sights andsounds. The super-acute state of his perceptions was succeeded after anight's sleep by the natural passivity with which children accept theimprobable, so that he passed from one novel impression to another aseasily and with the same exhilaration as if he had been listening to afairy tale. Solitude and neglect had no surprises for him, and it seemednatural enough that his mother and her maids should be too busy toremember his presence.
For the first day or two he sat unnoticed on his little stool in acorner of his mother's room, while packing-chests were dragged in,wardrobes emptied, mantua-makers and milliners consulted, andtroublesome creditors dismissed with abuse, or even blows, by theservants lounging in the ante-chamber. Donna Laura continued to show theliveliest symptoms of concern, but the child perceived her distress tobe but indirectly connected with the loss she had suffered, and he hadseen enough of poverty at the farm to guess that the need of money wassomehow at the bottom of her troubles. How any one could be in want, whoslept between damask curtains and lived on sweet cakes and chocolate, itexceeded his fancy to conceive; yet there were times when his mother'svoice had the same frightened angry sound as Filomena's on the days whenthe bailiff went over the accounts at Pontesordo.
Her excellency's rooms, during these days, were always crowded, forbesides the dressmakers and other merchants there was the hairdresser,or French Monsu--a loud, important figure, with a bag full of cosmeticsand curling-irons--the abate, always running in and out with messagesand letters, and taking no more notice of Odo than if he had never seenhim, and a succession of ladies brimming with condolences, and eachfollowed by a servant who swelled the noisy crowd of card-playinglacqueys in the ante-chamber.
Through all these figures came and went another, to Odo the mostnoticeable,--that of a handsome young man with a high manner, dressedalways in black, but with an excess of lace ruffles and jewels, aclouded amber head to his cane, and red heels to his shoes. This younggentleman, whose age could not have been more than twenty, and who hadthe coldest insolent air, was treated with profound respect by all butDonna Laura, who was for ever quarrelling with him when he was present,yet could not support his absence without lamentations and alarm. Theabate appeared to act as messenger between the two, and when he came tosay that the Count rode with the court, or was engaged to sup with thePrime Minister, or had business on his father's estate in the country,the lady would openly yield to her distress, crying out that she knewwell enough what his excuses meant: that she was the most cruellyoutraged of women, and that he treated her no better than a husband.
For two days Odo languished in his corner, whisked by the women'sskirts, smothered under the hoops and falbalas which the dressmakersunpacked from their cases, fed at irregular hours, and faring on thewhole no better than at Pontesordo. The third morning, Vanna, who seemedthe most good-natured of the women, cried out on his pale looks when shebrought him his cup of chocolate. "I declare," she exclaimed, "the childhas had no air since he came in from the farm. What does your excellencysay? Shall the hunchback take him for a walk in the gardens?"To this her excellency, who sat at her toilet under the hair-dresser'shands, irritably replied that she had not slept all night and was in nostate to be tormented about such trifles, but that the child might gowhere he pleased.
Odo, who was very weary of his corner, sprang up readily enough whenVanna, at this, beckoned him to the inner ante-chamber. Here, wherepersons of a certain condition waited (the outer being given over toservants and tradesmen), they found a lean humpbacked boy, shabbilydressed in darned stockings and a faded coat, but with an extraordinarykeen pale face that at once attracted and frightened the child.
"There, go with him; he won't eat you," said Vanna, giving him a push asshe hurried away; and Odo, trembling a little, laid his hand in theboy's. "Where do you come from?" he faltered, looking up into hiscompanion's face.
The boy laughed and the blood rose to his high cheekbones. "I?--From theInnocenti, if your Excellency knows where that is," said he.
Odo's face lit up. "Of course I do," he cried, reassured. "I know a girlwho comes from there--the Momola at Pontesordo.""Ah, indeed?" said the boy with a queer look. "Well, she's my sister,then. Give her my compliments when you see her, cavaliere. Oh, we're alarge family, we are!"Odo's perplexity was returning. "Are you really Momola's brother?" heasked.
"Eh, in a way--we're children of the same house.""But you live in the palace, don't you?" Odo persisted, his curiositysurmounting his fear. "Are you a servant of my mother's?""I'm the servant of your illustrious mother's servants; the abatino ofthe waiting-women. I write their love-letters, do you see, cavaliere, Icarry their rubbish to the pawnbroker's when their sweethearts have bledthem of their savings; I clean the birdcages and feed the monkeys, anddo the steward's accounts when he's drunk, and sleep on a bench in theportico and steal my food from the pantry...and my father very likelygoes in velvet and carries a sword at his side."The boy's voice had grown shrill, and his eyes blazed like an owl's inthe dark. Odo would have given the world to be back in his corner, buthe was ashamed to betray his lack of heart; and to give himself couragehe asked haughtily: "And what is your name, boy?"The hunchback gave him a gleaming look. "Call me Brutus," he cried, "forBrutus killed a tyrant." He gave Odo's hand a pull. "Come along," saidhe, "and I'll show you his statue in the garden--Brutus's statue in aprince's garden, mind you!" And as the little boy trotted at his sidedown the long corridors he kept repeating under his breath in a kind ofangry sing-song, "For Brutus killed a tyrant."The sense of strangeness inspired by his odd companion soon gave way inOdo's mind to emotions of delight and wonder. He was, even at that age,unusually sensitive to external impressions, and when the hunchback,after descending many stairs and winding through endless back-passages,at length led him out on a terrace above the gardens, the beauty of thesight swelled his little heart to bursting.
A Duke of Pianura had, some hundred years earlier, caused a great wingto be added to his palace by the eminent architect Carlo Borromini, andthis accomplished designer had at the same time replanted and enlargedthe ducal gardens. To Odo, who had never seen plantations more artfulthan the vineyards and mulberry orchards about Pontesordo, theseperspectives of clipped beech and yew, these knots of box filled in withmulti-coloured sand, appeared, with the fountains, colonnades andtrellised arbours surmounted by globes of glass, to represent the verypattern and Paradise of gardens. It seemed indeed too beautiful to bereal, and he trembled, as he sometimes did at the music of the Eastermass, when the hunchback, laughing at his amazement, led him down theterrace steps.
It was Odo's lot in after years to walk the alleys of many a splendidgarden, and to pace, often wearily enough, the paths along which he wasnow led; but never after did he renew the first enchanted impression ofmystery and brightness that remained with him as the most vivid emotionof his childhood.
Though it was February the season was so soft that the orange and lemontrees had been put out in their earthen vases before the lemon-house,and the beds in the parterres were full of violets, daffodils andauriculas; but the scent of the orange-blossoms and the bright coloursof the flowers moved Odo less than the noble ordonnance of the pleachedalleys, each terminated by a statue or a marble seat; and when he cameto the grotto where, amid rearing sea-horses and Tritons, a cascadepoured from the grove above, his wonder passed into such delicious aweas hung him speechless on the hunchback's hand.
"Eh," said the latter with a sneer, "it's a finer garden than we have atour family palace. Do you know what's planted there?" he asked, turningsuddenly on the little boy. "Dead bodies, cavaliere! Rows and rows ofthem; the bodies of my brothers and sisters, the Innocents who die likeflies every year of the cholera and the measles and the putrid fever."He saw the terror in Odo's face and added in a gentler tone: "Eh, don'tcry, cavaliere; they sleep better in those beds than in any othersthey're like to lie on. Come, come, and I'll show your excellency theaviaries."From the aviaries they passed to the Chinese pavilion, where the Dukesupped on summer evenings, and thence to the bowling-alley, thefish-stew and the fruit-garden. At every step some fresh surprisearrested Odo; but the terrible vision of that other garden planted withthe dead bodies of the Innocents robbed the spectacle of its brightness,dulled the plumage of the birds behind their gilt wires and cast adeeper shade over the beech-grove, where figures of goat-faced menlurked balefully in the twilight. Odo was glad when they left theblackness of this grove for the open walks, where gardeners were workingand he had the reassurance of the sky. The hunchback, who seemed sorrythat he had frightened him, told him many curious stories about themarble images that adorned the walks; and pausing suddenly before one ofa naked man with a knife in his hand, cried out in a frenzy: "This is mynamesake, Brutus!" But when Odo would have asked if the naked man was akinsman, the boy hurried him on, saying only: "You'll read of him someday in Plutarch."