Edith Wharton: Complete Works. Edith Wharton

years earlier, caused a great wing to be added to his palace by the eminent architect Carlo Borromini; and this accomplished designer had at the same time replanted and enlarged the ducal gardens. To Odo, who had never seen plantations more artful than the vineyards and mulberry orchards about Pontesordo, these perspectives of clipped beech and yew, these knots of box filled in with multi-colored sand, appeared, with the fountains, colonnades and trellised arbors surmounted by globes of glass, to represent the very pattern and Paradise of gardens. It seemed indeed too beautiful to be real, and he trembled, as he sometimes did at the music of the Easter mass, when the hunchback, laughing at his amazement, led him down the terrace steps.

      It was Odo’s lot in after years to walk the alleys of many a splendid garden, and to pace, often wearily enough, the paths along which he was now led; but never after did he renew the first enchanted impression of mystery and brightness that remained with him as the most vivid emotion of his childhood.

      Though it was February the season was so soft that the orange and lemon trees had been put out in their earthen vases before the lemon-house, and the beds in the parterres were full of violets, daffodils and auriculas; but the scent of the orange-blossoms and the bright colors of the flowers moved Odo less than the noble ordonnance of the pleached alleys, each terminated by a statue or a marble seat; and when he came to the grotto where, amid rearing sea-horses and Tritons, a cascade poured from the grove above, his wonder passed into such delicious awe as hung him speechless on the hunchback’s hand.

      “Eh,” said the latter with a sneer, “it’s a finer garden than we have at our family-palace. Do you know what’s planted there?” he asked turning suddenly on the little boy. “Dead bodies, cavaliere; rows and rows of them; the bodies of my brothers and sisters, the Innocents who die like flies 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’t cry, cavaliere; they sleep better in those beds than in any others they’re like to lie on.—Come, come, and I’ll show your excellency the aviaries.”

      From the aviaries they passed to the Chinese pavilion, where the Duke supped on summer evenings, and thence to the bowling-alley, the fish-stew and the fruit-garden. At every step some fresh surprise arrested Odo, but the terrible vision of that other garden planted with the dead bodies of the Innocents robbed the spectacle of its brightness, dulled the plumage of the birds behind their gilt wires and cast a deeper shade over the beech-grove where figures of goat-faced men lurked balefully in the twilight. Odo was glad when they left the blackness of this grove for the open walks, where gardeners were working and he had the reassurance of the sky. The hunchback, who seemed sorry that he had frightened him, told him many curious stories about the marble images that adorned the walks, and pausing suddenly before one of a naked man with a knife in his hand, cried out in a frenzy, “This is my namesake, Brutus!”—but when Odo would have asked if the naked man was a kinsman, the boy hurried him on, saying only: “You’ll read of him some day in Plutarch.”

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III.

      Odo, next morning, under the hunchback’s guidance, continued his exploration of the palace. His mother seemed glad to be rid of him, and Vanna packing him off early, with the warning that he was not to fall into the fish-ponds or get himself trampled by the horses, he guessed, with a thrill, that he had leave to visit the stables. Here, in fact, the two boys were soon making their way among the crowd of grooms and strappers in the yard, seeing the Duke’s carriage-horses groomed and the Duchess’s cream-colored hackney saddled for her ride in the chase; and at length, after much lingering and gazing, going on to the harness-rooms and coach-house. The state-carriages with their carved and gilt wheels, their panels gay with flushed divinities and their stupendous velvet hammer-cloths edged with bullion, held Odo spell-bound. He had a born taste for splendor, and the thought that he might one day sit in one of these glittering vehicles puffed his breast with pride and made him address the hunchback with sudden condescension. “When I’m a man I shall ride in these carriages,” he said; whereat the other laughed and returned good-humoredly, “Eh, that’s not so much to boast of, cavaliere; I shall ride in a carriage one of these days myself.” Odo stared, not over-pleased; and the boy added, “When I’m carried to the church-yard, I mean,” with a chuckle of relish at the joke.

      From the stables they passed to the riding-school with its open galleries supported on twisted columns, where the Duke’s gentlemen managed their horses and took their exercise in bad weather. Several rode there that morning; and among them, on a fine Arab, Odo recognized the young man in black velvet who was so often in Donna Laura’s apartments.

      “Who’s that?” he whispered, pulling the hunchback’s sleeve as the gentleman, just below them, made his horse execute a brilliant balotade.

      “That? Bless the innocent! Why, the Count Lelio Trescorre, your illustrious mother’s cavaliere servente.”

      Odo was puzzled, but some instinct of reserve withheld him from farther questions. The hunchback, however, had no such scruples. “They do say, though,” he went on, “that her Highness has her eye on him, and in that case, I’ll wager, your illustrious Mamma has no more chance than a sparrow against a hawk.”

      The boy’s words were incomprehensible, but the vague sense that some danger might be threatening his mother’s friend made Odo ask in a whisper, “What would her Highness do to him?”

      “Make him a prime-minister, cavaliere,” the hunchback laughed.

      Odo’s guide, it appeared, was not privileged to conduct him through the state-apartments of the palace, and the little boy had now been four days under the ducal roof without catching so much as a glimpse of his sovereign and cousin. The very next morning, however, Vanna swept him from his trundle-bed with the announcement that he was to be received by the Duke that day, and that the tailor was now waiting to try on his court-dress. He found his mother propped against her pillows, drinking chocolate, feeding her pet monkey and giving agitated directions to the maid-servants on their knees before the open carriage-trunks. Her excellency informed Odo that she had that moment received an express from his grandfather, the old Marquess di Donnaz; that they were to start next morning for the castle of Donnaz, and that he was to be presented to the Duke as soon as his Highness had risen from dinner. A plump purse lay on the coverlet, and her countenance wore an air of kindness and animation which, together with the prospect of wearing a court-dress and travelling to his grandfather’s castle in the mountains, so worked on Odo’s spirits that, forgetting the abate’s instructions, he sprang to her with an eager caress.

      “Child, child,” was her only rebuke; and she added, with a tap on his cheek, “It is lucky I shall have a sword to protect me.”

      Long before the hour Odo was buttoned into his embroidered coat and waistcoat. He would have on the sword at once, and when they sat down to dinner, though his mother pressed him to eat with more concern than she had before shown, it went hard with him to put his weapon aside and he cast longing eyes at the corner where it lay. At length a chamberlain summoned them, and they set out down the corridors, attended by two servants. Odo held his head high, with one hand leading Donna Laura (for he would not appear to be led by her) while the other fingered his sword. The deformed beggars who always lurked about the great staircase fawned on them as they passed, and on a landing they crossed the humpbacked boy, who grinned mockingly at Odo; but the latter, with his chin up, would not so much as glance at him.

      A master of ceremonies in short black cloak and gold chain received them in the antechamber of the Duchess’s apartments, where the court played lansquenet after dinner; the doors of her Highness’s closet were thrown open, and Odo, now glad enough to cling to his mother’s hand, found himself in a tall room, with gods and goddesses in the clouds overhead and personages as supra-terrestrial seated in gilt armchairs about a smoking brazier. Before one of these, to whom Donna Laura swept successive curtsies in advancing, the frightened cavaliere found himself dragged with his sword between his legs. He ducked his head like the old drake diving for worms in the puddle at the farm, and when at last he dared look up, it was to see an odd sallow face, half smothered in an immense wig, bowing back at