Trescorre too kept open house, and here Odo found a warmer welcome thanhe had expected. Though Trescorre was still the Duchess's accreditedlover, it was clear that the tie between them was no longer such as tomake him resent her kindness to her young kinsman. He seemed indeedanxious to draw Odo into her Highness's circle, and surprised him by afrankness and affability of which his demeanour at Turin had given nopromise. As leader of the anti-clericals he stood for such liberalism asdared show its head in Pianura; and he seemed disposed to invite Odo'sconfidence in political matters. The latter was, however, too much thechild of his race not to hang back from such an invitation. He did notdistrust Trescorre more than the other courtiers; but it was a time whenevery ear was alert for the foot-fall of treachery, and the rashest mandid not care to taste first of any cup that was offered him.

　　These scruples Trescorre made it his business to dispel. He was the onlyperson at court who was willing to discuss politics, and his clear viewof affairs excited Odo's admiration if not his concurrence. Odo's was infact one of those dual visions which instinctively see both sides of acase and take the defence of the less popular. Gamba's principles weredear to him; but he did not therefore believe in the personal basenessof every opponent of the cause. He had refrained from mentioning thehunchback to his supposed brother; but the latter, in one of theirtalks, brought forward Gamba's name, without reference to therelationship, but with high praise for the young librarian's parts.

　　This, at the moment, put Odo on his guard; but Trescorre having one daybegged him to give Gamba warning of some petty danger that threatenedhim from the clerical side, it became difficult not to believe in aninterest so attested; the more so as Trescorre let it be seen thatGamba's political views were not such as to distract from his sympathy.

　　"The fellow's brains," said he, "would be of infinite use to me; butperhaps he serves us best at a distance. All I ask is that he shall notrisk himself too near Father Ignazio's talons, for he would be a prettymorsel to throw to the Holy Office, and the weak point of such a man'sposition is that, however dangerous in life, he can threaten no one fromthe grave."Odo reported this to Gamba, who heard with a two-edged smile. "Yes," washis comment, "he fears me enough to want to see me safe in his fold."Odo flushed at the implication. "And why not?" said he. "Could you notserve the cause better by attaching yourself openly to the liberals thanby lurking in the ditch to throw mud at both parties?""The liberals!" sneered Gamba. "Where are they? And what have they done?

　　It was they who drove out the Jesuits; but to whom did the Society'slands go? To the Duke, every acre of them! And the peasantry sufferedfar less under the fathers, who were good agriculturists, than under theDuke, who is too busy with monks and astrologers to give his mind toirrigation or the reclaiming of waste land. As to the University, whoreplaced the Jesuits there? Professors from Padua or Pavia? Heavenforbid! But holy Barnabites that have scarce Latin enough to spell outthe Lives of the Saints! The Jesuits at least gave a good education tothe upper classes; but now the young noblemen are as ignorant aspeasants."Trescorre received at his house, besides the court functionaries, allthe liberal faction and the Duchess's personal friends. He kept a lavishstate, but lacking the Bishop's social gifts, was less successful infusing the different elements of his circle. The Duke, for the first fewweeks after his kinsman's arrival, received no company; and did not evenappear in the Belverde's drawing-rooms; but Odo deemed it none the lesspolitic to show himself there without delay.

　　The new Marchioness of Boscofolto lived in one of the finest palaces ofPianura, but prodigality was the least of her failings, and themeagreness of her hospitality was an unfailing source of epigram to thedrawing-rooms of the opposition. True, she kept open table for half theclergy in the town (omitting, of course, those worldly ecclesiastics whofrequented the episcopal palace), but it was whispered that she hadpersuaded her cook to take half wages in return for the privilege ofvictualling such holy men, and that the same argument enabled her toobtain her provisions below the market price. In her outer ante-chamberthe servants yawned dismally over a cold brazier, without so much as agame of cards to divert them, and the long enfilade of saloons leadingto her drawing-room was so scantily lit that her guests could scarcerecognise each other in passing. In the room where she sat, a tallcrucifix of ebony and gold stood at her elbow and a holy-water cupencrusted with jewels hung on the wall at her side. A dozen or moreecclesiastics were always gathered in stiff seats about the hearth; andthe aspect of the apartment, and the Marchioness's semi-monasticcostume, justified the nickname of "the sacristy," which the Duchess hadbestowed on her rival's drawing-room.

　　Around the small fire on this cheerless hearth the fortunes of the statewere discussed and directed, benefices disposed of, court appointmentsdebated, and reputations made and unmade in tones that suggested the lowdrone of a group of canons intoning the psalter in an empty cathedral.

　　The Marchioness, who appeared as eager as the others to win Odo to herparty, received him with every mark of consideration and pressed him toaccompany her on a visit to her brother, the Abbot of the Barnabites; aninvitation which he accepted with the more readiness as he had notforgotten the part played by that religious in the adventure ofMirandolina of Chioggia.

　　He found the Abbot a man with a bland intriguing eye and centuries ofpious leisure in his voice. He received his visitors in a room hung withsmoky pictures of the Spanish school, showing Saint Jerome in thewilderness, the death of Saint Peter Martyr, and other sanguinarypassages in the lives of the saints; and Odo, seated among suchsurroundings, and hearing the Abbot deplore the loose lives andreligious negligence of certain members of the court, could scarcerepress a smile as the thought of Mirandolina flitted through his mind.

　　"She must," he reflected, "have found this a sad change from theBishop's palace;" and admired with what philosophy she had passed fromone protector to the other.

　　Life in Pianura, after the first few weeks, seemed on the whole a tamebusiness to a youth of his appetite; and he secretly longed for apretext to resume his travels. None, however, seemed likely to offer;for it was clear that the Duke, in the interval of more pressingconcerns, wished to study and observe his kinsman. When sufficientlyrecovered from the effects of the pilgrimage, he sent for Odo andquestioned him closely as to the way in which he had spent his timesince coming to Pianura, the acquaintances he had formed and thechurches he had frequented. Odo prudently dwelt on the lofty tone of theBelverde's circle, and on the privilege he had enjoyed in attending heron a visit to the holy Abbot of the Barnabites; touching more lightly onhis connection with the Bishop, and omitting all mention of Gamba andCrescenti. The Duke assumed a listening air, but it was clear that hecould not put off his private thoughts long enough to give an open mindto other matters; and Odo felt that he was nowhere so secure as in hiscousin's company. He remembered, however, that the Duke had plenty ofeyes to replace his own, and that a secret which was safe in his actualpresence might be in mortal danger on his threshold.

　　His Highness on this occasion was pleased to inform his kinsman that hehad ordered Count Trescorre to place at the young man's disposal anincome enabling him to keep a carriage and pair, four saddle-horses andfive servants. It was scant measure for an heir-presumptive, and Odowondered if the Belverde had had a hand in the apportionment; but hisindifference to such matters (for though personally fastidious he caredlittle for display) enabled him to show such gratitude that the Duke,fancying he might have been content with less, had nearly withdrawn twoof the saddle-horses. This becoming behaviour greatly advanced the youngman in the esteem of his Highness, who accorded him on the spot thepetites entrees of the ducal apartments. It was a privilege Odo had nomind to abuse; for if life moved slowly in the Belverde's circle it wasat a standstill in the Duke's. His Highness never went abroad but toserve mass in some church (his almost daily practice) or to visit one ofthe numerous monasteries within the city. From Ash Wednesday to EasterMonday it was his custom to transact no public or private business.

　　During this time he received none of his ministers, and saw his son butfor a few moments once a day; while in Holy Week he made a retreat withthe Barnabites, the Belverde withdrawing for the same period to theconvent of the Perpetual Adoration.

　　Odo, as his new life took shape, found his chief interest in the societyof Crescenti and Gamba. In the Duchess's company he might have lost alltaste for soberer pleasures, but that his political sympathies wore agirl's reproachful shape. Ever at his side, more vividly than in thebody, Fulvia Vivaldi became the symbol of his best aims and deepestfailure. Sometimes, indeed, her look drove him forth in the Duchess'strain, but more often, drawing him from the crowd of pleasure-seekers,beckoned the way to solitude and study. Under Crescenti's tuition hebegan the reading of Dante, who just then, after generations of neglect,was once more lifting his voice above the crowd of minor singers. Themighty verse swept Odo out to open seas of thought, and from his visionof that earlier Italy, hapless, bleeding, but alive and breast to breastwith the foe, he drew the presage of his country's resurrection.

　　Passing from this high music to the company of Gamba and his friends waslike leaving a church where the penitential psalms are being sung forthe market-place where mud and eggs are flying. The change was notagreeable to a fastidious taste; but, as Gamba said, you cannot cleanout a stable by waving incense over it. After some hesitation, he hadagreed to make Odo acquainted with those who, like himself, weresecretly working in the cause of progress. These were mostly of themiddle class, physicians, lawyers, and such men of letters as couldsubsist on the scant wants of an unliterary town. Ablest among them wasthe bookseller, Andreoni, whose shop was the meeting place of all theliterati of Pianura. Andreoni, famous throughout Italy for his editionsof the classics, was a man of liberal views and considerable learning,and in his private room were to be found many prohibited volumes, suchas Beccaria's Crime and Punishment, Gravina's Hydra Mystica, Concini'sHistory of Probabilism and the Amsterdam editions of the Frenchphilosophical works.

　　The reformers met at various places, and their meetings were conductedwith as much secrecy as those of the Honey-Bees. Odo was at firstsurprised that they should admit him to their conferences; but he soondivined that the gatherings he attended were not those at which theprivate designs of the party were discussed. It was plain that theybelonged to some kind of secret association; and before he had been longin Pianura he learned that the society of the Illuminati, that bugbearof priests and princes, was supposed to have agents at work in theduchy. Odo had heard little of this execrated league, but that it wassaid to preach atheism, tyrannicide and the complete abolition ofterritorial rights; but this, being the report of the enemy, was to bereceived with a measure of doubt. He tried to learn from Gamba whetherthe Illuminati had a lodge in the city; but on this point he couldextract no information. Meanwhile he listened with interest todiscussions on taxation, irrigation, and such economic problems as mightsafely be aired in his presence.

　　These talks brought vividly before him the political corruption of thestate and the misery of the unprivileged classes. All the land in theduchy was farmed on the metayer system, and with such ill results thatthe peasants were always in debt to their landlords. The weight of theevil lay chiefly on the country-people, who had to pay on every pig theykilled, on all the produce they carried to market, on their farmimplements, their mulberry-orchards and their silk-worms, to say nothingof the tithes to the parish. So oppressive were these obligations thatmany of the peasants, forsaking their farms, enrolled themselves in themendicant orders, thus actually strengthening the hand of theiroppressors. Of legislative redress there was no hope, and the Duke wasinaccessible to all but his favourites. The previous year, as Odolearned, eight hundred poor labourers, exasperated by want, hadpetitioned his Highness to relieve them of the corvee; but though theyhad raised fifteen hundred scudi to bribe the court official who was topresent their address, no reply had ever been received. In the cityitself, the monopoly of corn and tobacco weighed heavily on themerchants, and the strict censorship of the press made the openventilation of wrongs impossible, while the Duke's sbirri and the agentsof the Holy Office could drag a man's thoughts from his bosom and searchhis midnight dreams. The Church party, in the interest of their order,fostered the Duke's fears of sedition and branded every innovator as anatheist; the Holy Office having even cast grave doubts on the orthodoxyof a nobleman who had tried to introduce the English system of ploughingon his estates. It was evident to Odo that the secret hopes of thereformers centred in him, and the consciousness of their belief wassweeter than love in his bosom. It diverted him from the follies of hisclass, fixed his thoughts at an age when they are apt to range, and thusslowly shaped and tempered him for high uses.

　　In this fashion the weeks passed and summer came. It was the Duchess'shabit to escape the August heats by retiring to the dower-house on thePiana, a league beyond the gates; but the little prince being stillunder the care of the German physician, who would not consent to hisremoval, her Highness reluctantly lingered in Pianura. With the firstleafing of the oaks Odo's old love for the budding earth awoke, and herode out daily in the forest toward Pontesordo. It was but a flatstretch of shade, lacking the voice of streams and the cold breath ofmountain-gorges: a wood without humours or surprises; but the merespring of the turf was delightful as he cantered down the grass alleysroofed with level boughs, the outer sunlight just gilding the lip of thelong green tunnel.

　　Sometimes he attended the Duchess, but oftener chose to ride alone,setting forth early after a night at cards or a late vigil inCrescent............