She pined for some word of Pianura; but when a young abate, who had touched there on his way from Tuscany, called for a night at the castle to pay his duty to Don Gervaso, the word he brought with him of the birth of an heir to the duchy was so little to Donna Laura's humour that she sprang up from the supper-table, and crying out to the astonished Odo, "Ah, now you are for the Church indeed," withdrew in disorder to her chamber. The abate, who ascribed her commotion to a sudden seizure, continued to retail the news of Pianura, and Odo, listening with his elders, learned that Count Lelio Trescorre had been appointed Master of the Horse, to the indignation of the Bishop, who desired the place for his nephew, Don Serafino; that the Duke and Duchess were never together; that the Duchess was suspected of being in secret correspondence with the Austrians, and that the young Marquess of Cerveno was gone to the baths of Lucca to recover from an attack of tertian fever contracted the previous autumn at the Duke's hunting-lodge near Pontesordo. Odo listened for some mention of his humpbacked friend, or of Momola the foundling; but the abate's talk kept a higher level and no one less than a cavaliere figured on his lips. He was the only visitor of quality who came that winter to Donnaz, and after his departure a fixed gloom settled on Donna Laura's spirits. Dusk at that season fell early in the gorge, fierce winds blew off the glaciers, and Donna Laura sat shivering and lamenting on one side of the hearth, while the old Marchioness, on the other, strained her eyes over an embroidery in which the pattern repeated itself like the invocations of a litany, and Don Gervaso, near the smoking oil-lamp, read aloud from the Glories of Mary or the Way of Perfection of Saint Theresa.
On such evenings Odo, stealing from the tapestry parlour, would seek out Bruno, who sat by the kitchen hearth with the old hound's nose at his feet. The kitchen, indeed, on winter nights, was the pleasantest place in the castle. The fire-light from its great stone chimney shone on the strings of maize and bunches of dried vegetables that hung from the roof and on the copper kettles and saucepans ranged along the wall. The wind raged against the shutters of the unglazed windows, and the maid-servants, distaff in hand, crowded closer to the blaze, listening to the songs of some wandering fiddler or to the stories of a ruddy-nosed Capuchin monk who was being regaled, by the steward's orders, on a supper of tripe and mulled wine. The Capuchin's tales, told in the Piedmontese jargon, and seasoned with strange allusions and boisterous laughter, were of little interest to Odo, who would creep into the ingle beside Bruno and beg for some story of his ancestors. The old man was never weary of rehearsing the feats and gestures of the lords of Donnaz, and Odo heard again and again how they had fought the savage Switzers north of the Alps and the Dauphin's men in the west; how they had marched with Savoy against Montferrat and with France against the Republic of Genoa. Better still he liked to hear of the Marquess Gualberto, who had been the Duke of Milan's ally and had brought home the great Milanese painter to adorn his banqueting-room at Donnaz. The lords of Donnaz had never been noted for learning, and Odo's grandfather was fond of declaring that a nobleman need not be a scholar; but the great Marquess Gualberto, if himself unlettered, had been the patron of poets and painters and had kept learned clerks to write down the annals of his house on parchment painted by the monks. These annals were locked in the archives, under Don Gervaso's care; but Odo learned from the old servant that some of the great Marquess's books had lain for years on an upper shelf in the vestry off the chapel; and here one day, with Bruno's aid, the little boy dislodged from a corner behind the missals and altar-books certain sheepskin volumes clasped in blackened silver. The comeliest of these, which bore on their title-page a dolphin curled about an anchor, were printed in unknown characters; but on opening the smaller volumes Odo felt the same joyous catching of the breath as when he had stepped out on the garden-terrace at Pianura. For here indeed were gates leading to a land of delectation: the country of the giant Morgante, the enchanted island of Avillion, the court of the Soldan and the King's palace at Camelot.
In this region Odo spent many blissful hours. His fancy ranged in the wake of heroes and adventurers who, for all he knew, might still be feasting and fighting north of the Alps, or might any day with a blast of their magic horns summon the porter to the gates of Donnaz. Foremost among them, a figure towering above even Rinaldo, Arthur and the Emperor Frederic, was that Conrad, father of Conradin, whose sayings are set down in the old story-book of the Cento Novelle, "the flower of gentle speech." There was one tale of King Conrad that the boy never forgot: how the King, in his youth, had always about him a company of twelve lads of his own age; how when Conrad did wrong, his governors, instead of punishing him, beat his twelve companions; and how, on the young King's asking what the lads were being punished for, the pedagogues replied:
"For your Majesty's offences."
"And why do you punish my companions instead of me?"
"Because you are our lord and master," he was told.
At this the King fell to thinking, and thereafter, it is said, in pity for those who must suffer in his stead he set close watch on himself, lest his sinning should work harm to others. This was the story of King Conrad; and much as Odo loved the clash of arms and joyous feats of paladins rescuing fair maids in battle, yet Conrad's seemed to him, even then, a braver deed than these.
In March of the second year the old Marquess, returning from Turin, was accompanied, to the surprise of all, by the fantastical figure of an elderly gentleman in the richest travelling dress, with one of the new French toupets, a thin wrinkled painted face, and emitting with every movement a prodigious odour of millefleurs. This visitor, who was attended by his French barber and two or three liveried servants, the Marquess introduced as the lord of Valdu, a neighbouring seigneurie of no great account. Though his lands marched with the Marquess's, it was years since the Count had visited Donnaz, being one of the King's chamberlains and always in attendance on his Majesty; and it was amazing to see with what smirks and grimaces, and ejaculations in Piedmontese French, he complimented the Marchioness on her appearance, and exclaimed at the magnificence of the castle, which must doubtless have appeared to him little better than a cattle-grange. His talk was unintelligible to Odo, but there was no mistaking the nature of the glances he fixed on Donna Laura, who, having fled to her room on his approach, presently descended in a ravishing new sacque, with an air of extreme surprise, and her hair curled (as Odo afterward learned) by the Count's own barber.
Odo had never seen his mother look handsomer. She sparkled at the Count's compliments, embraced her father, playfully readjusted her mother's coif, and in the prettiest way made their excuses to the Count for the cold draughts and bare floors of the castle. "For having lived at court myself," said she, "I know to what your excellency is accustomed, and can the better value your condescension in exposing yourself, at this rigorous season, to the hardships of our mountain-top."
The Marquess at this began to look black, but seeing the Count's pleasure in the compliment, contented himself with calling out for dinner, which, said he, with all respect to their visitor, would stay his stomach better than the French kick-shaws at his Majesty's table. Whether the Count was of the same mind, it was impossible to say, though Odo could not help observing that the stewed venison and spiced boar's flesh seemed to present certain obstacles either to his jaws or his palate, and that his appetite lingered on the fried chicken-livers and tunny-fish in oil; but he cast such looks at Donna Laura as seemed to declare that for her sake he would willingly have risked his teeth on the very cobblestones of the court. Knowing how she pined for company, Odo was not surprised at his mother's complaisance; yet wondered to see the smile with which she presently received the Count's half-bantering disparagement of Pianura. For the duchy, by his showing, was a place of small consequence, an asylum of superannuated fashions; whereas no Frenchman of quality ever visited Turin without exclaiming on its resemblance to Paris, and vowing that none who had the entree of Stupinigi need cross the Alps to see Versailles. As to the Marquess's depriving the court of Donna Laura's presence, their guest protested against it as an act of overt disloyalty to the sovereign; and what most surprised Odo, who had often heard his grandfather declaim against the Count as a cheap jackanapes that hung about the court for what he could make at play, was the indulgence with which the Marquess received his visitor's sallies. Father and daughter in fact vied in amenities to the Count. The fire was kept alight all day in his rooms, his Monsu waited on with singular civility by the steward, and Donna Laura's own woman sent down by her mistress to prepare his morning