The singular being with whom chance had thus brought him acquainted wasto have a lasting influence on the formation of Odo's character.

　　Vittorio Alfieri, then just concluding, at the age of sixteen, hisdesultory years of academic schooling, was probably the mostextraordinary youth in Charles Emmanuel's dominion. Of the futurestudent, of the tragic poet who was to prepare the liberation of Italyby raising the political ideals of his generation, this moody boy withhis craze for dress and horses, his pride of birth and contempt for hisown class, his liberal theories and insolently aristocratic practice,must have given small promise to the most discerning observer. It seemsindeed probable that none thought him worth observing and that he passedamong his townsmen merely as one of the most idle and extravagant youngnoblemen in a society where idleness and extravagance were held to bethe natural attributes of the great. But in the growth of character thelight on the road to Damascus is apt to be preceded by faint premonitorygleams; and even in his frivolous days at the Academy Alfieri carried aVirgil in his pocket and wept and trembled over Ariosto's verse.

　　It was the instant response of Odo's imagination that drew the twotogether. Odo, as one of the foreign pupils, was quartered in the samewing of the Academy with the students of Alfieri's class, and enjoyed analmost equal freedom. Thus, despite the difference of age, the ladsfound themselves allied by taste and circumstances. Among the youth oftheir class they were perhaps the only two who already felt, howeverobscurely, the stirring of unborn ideals, the pressure of that tide ofrenovation that was to sweep them, on widely-sundered currents, to thesame uncharted deep. Alfieri, at any rate, represented to the youngerlad the seer who held in his hands the keys of knowledge and beauty. Odocould never forget the youth who first leant him Annibale Caro's Aeneidand Metastasio's opera libretti, Voltaire's Zaire and the comedies ofGoldoni; while Alfieri perhaps found in his companion's sympathy withhis own half-dormant tastes the first incentive to a nobler activity.

　　Certain it is that, in the interchange of their daily comradeship, theelder gave his friend much that he was himself unconscious ofpossessing, and perhaps first saw reflected in Odo's more vividsensibility an outline of the formless ideals coiled in the depths ofhis own sluggish nature.

　　The difference in age, and the possession of an independent fortune,which the laws of Savoy had left Alfieri free to enjoy since hisfifteenth year, gave him an obvious superiority over Odo; but ifAlfieri's amusements separated him from his young friend, his tasteswere always drawing them together; and Odo was happily of those who aremore engaged in profiting by what comes their way than in pining forwhat escapes them. Much as he admired Alfieri, it was somehow impossiblefor the latter to condescend to him; and the equality of intercoursebetween the two was perhaps its chief attraction to a youth surfeitedwith adulation.

　　Of the opportunities his new friendship brought him, none became inafter years a pleasanter memory to Odo than his visits with Vittorio tothe latter's uncle, the illustrious architect Count Benedetto Alfieri.

　　This accomplished and amiable man, who had for many years devoted histalents to the King's service, was lodged in a palace adjoining theAcademy; and thither, one holiday afternoon, Vittorio conducted hisyoung friend.

　　Ignorant as Odo was of all the arts, he felt on the very threshold thenew quality of his surroundings. These tall bare rooms, where busts andsarcophagi were ranged as in the twilight of a temple, diffused aninfluence that lowered the voice and hushed the step. In thesemi-Parisian capital where French architects designed the King'spleasure-houses and the nobility imported their boudoir-panellings fromParis and their damask hangings from Lyons, Benedetto Alfierirepresented the old classic tradition, the tradition of the "grandmanner," which had held its own through all later variations of taste,running parallel with the barocchismo of the seventeenth century and theeffeminate caprices of the rococo period. He had lived much in Rome, inthe company of men like Winckelmann and Maffei, in that society wherethe revival of classical research was being forwarded by the liberalityof Princes and Cardinals and by the indefatigable zeal of the scholarsin their pay. From this centre of aesthetic reaction Alfieri hadreturned to the Gallicized Turin, with its preference for the gracefuland ingenious rather than for the large, the noble, the restrained;bringing to bear on the taste of his native city the influence of a viewraised but perhaps narrowed by close study of the past: the view of ageneration of architects in whom archeological curiosity had stifled theartistic instinct, and who, instead of assimilating the spirit of thepast like their great predecessors, were engrossed in a sterilerestoration of the letter. It may be said of this school of architectsthat they were of more service to posterity than to theircontemporaries; for while they opened the way to modern antiquarianresearch, their pedantry checked the natural development of a stylewhich, if left to itself, might in time have found new and more vigorousforms of expression.

　　To Odo, happily, Count Benedetto's surroundings spoke more forcibly thanhis theories. Every object in the calm severe rooms appealed to the boywith the pure eloquence of form. Casts of the Vatican busts stoodagainst the walls and a niche at one end of the library contained amarble copy of the Apollo Belvedere. The sarcophagi with their wingedgenii, their garlands and bucranes, and porphyry tazzas, the fragmentsof Roman mosaic and Pompeian fresco-painting, roused Odo's curiosity asif they had been the scattered letters of a new alphabet; and he sawwith astonishment his friend Vittorio's indifference to these wonders.

　　Count Benedetto, it was clear, was resigned to his nephew's lack ofinterest. The old man doubtless knew that he represented to the youthonly the rich uncle whose crotchets must be humoured for the sake ofwhat his pocket may procure; and such kindly tolerance made Odo regretthat Vittorio should not at least affect an interest in his uncle'spursuits.

　　Odo's eagerness to see and learn filled Count Benedetto with a simplejoy. He brought forth all his treasures for the boy's instruction andthe two spent many an afternoon poring over Piranesi's Roman etchings,Maffei's Verona Illustrata, and Count Benedetto's own elegantpencil-drawings of classical remains. Like all students of his day hehad also his cabinet of antique gems and coins, from which Odo obtainedmore intimate glimpses of that buried life so marvellously exhumedbefore him: hints of traffic in far-off market-places and familiargestures of hands on which those very jewels might have sparkled. Nordid the Count restrict the boy's enquiries to that distant past; and forthe first time Odo heard of the masters who had maintained the greatclassical tradition on Latin soil: Sanmichele, Vignola, Sansovino, andthe divine Michael Angelo, whom the old architect never named withoutbaring his head. From the works of these architects Odo formed his firstconception of the............