Edith Wharton: Complete Works. Edith Wharton

that Odo learned of the social usage which compelled young widows to choose between remarriage and the cloister; and his subsequent views were unconsciously tinged by the remembrance of his mother’s melancholy bridal.

      Her departure left no traces but were speedily repaired by the coming of spring. The sun growing warmer, and the close season putting an end to the Marquess’s hunting, it was now Odo’s chief pleasure to carry his books to the walled garden between the castle and the southern face of the cliff. This small enclosure, probably a survival of mediæval horticulture, had along the upper ledge of its wall a grass-walk commanding the flow of the stream, and an angle-turret that turned one slit to the valley, the other to the garden lying below like a tranquil well of scent and brightness; its box-trees clipped to the shape of peacocks and lions, its clove-pinks and simples set in a border of thrift, and a pear-tree basking on its sunny wall. These pleasant spaces, which Odo had to himself save when the canonesses walked there to recite their rosary, he peopled with the knights and ladies of the Novelle, and the fantastic beings of Pulci’s epic: there walked the fay Morgana, Regulus the loyal knight, the giant Morgante, Trajan the just Emperor, and the proud figure of King Conrad; so that, escaping thither from the after-dinner dulness of the tapestry parlor, the boy seemed to pass from the most oppressive solitude to a world of warmth and fellowship.

      —————

VI.

      Odo, who, like all neglected children, was quick to note in the demeanor of his elders any hint of a change in his own condition, had been keenly conscious of the effect produced at Donnaz by the news of the Duchess of Pianura’s deliverance. Guided perhaps by his mother’s exclamation, he noticed an added zeal in Don Gervaso’s teachings, and an unction in the manner of his aunts and grandmother, who embraced him as though they were handling a relic; while the old Marquess, though he took his grandson seldomer on his rides, would sit staring at him with a frowning tenderness that once found vent in the growl—“Morbleu, but he’s too good for the tonsure!” All this made it clear to Odo that he was indeed meant for the Church, and he learned without surprise that the following spring he was to be sent to the seminary at Asti.

      With a view to prepare him for this change the canonesses suggested his attending them that year on their annual pilgrimage to the sanctuary of Oropa. Thither, for every feast of the Assumption, these pious ladies travelled in their litter; and Odo had heard from them many tales of the miraculous Black Virgin who drew thousands to her shrine among the mountains. They set forth in August, two days before the feast, ascending through chestnut groves to the region of bare rocks; thence downward across torrents hung with white acacia, and along park-like grassy levels deep in shade. The lively air, the murmur of verdure, the perfume of mown grass in the meadows, and the sweet call of cuckoos from every thicket, made an enchantment of the way; but Odo’s pleasure redoubled when, gaining the high-road to Oropa, they mingled with the long train of devotees ascending from the plain. Here were pilgrims of every condition, from the noble lady of Turin or Asti (for it was the favorite pilgrimage of the Sardinian court), attended by her physician and her cicisbeo, to the half-naked goat-herd of Val Sesia or Salluzzo; the cheerful farmers of the Milanese, with their wives, in silver necklaces and hairpins, riding pillion on plump white asses; sick persons travelling in closed litters or carried on hand-stretchers; crippled beggars obtruding their deformities; confraternities of hooded penitents, Franciscans, Capuchins and Poor Clares in dusty companies; jugglers, pedlars, Egyptians and sellers of drugs and amulets. From among these, as the canonesses’ litter jogged along, an odd figure advanced toward Odo, who had obtained leave to do the last mile of the journey on foot. This was a plump abate in tattered ecclesiastical dress, his shoes white as a miller’s and the perspiration streaking his face as he labored along in the dust. He accosted Odo in a soft shrill voice, begging leave to walk beside the young cavaliere, whom he had more than once had the honor of seeing at Pianura; and, in reply to the boy’s surprised glance, added, with a swelling of the chest and an absurd gesture of self-introduction, “But perhaps the cavaliere is not too young to have heard of the illustrious Cantapresto, late primo soprano of the ducal theatre of Pianura?”

      Odo being obliged to avow his ignorance, the fat creature mopped his brow and continued with a gasp—“Ah, your excellency, what is fame? From glory to obscurity is no farther than from one mile-stone to another! Not eight years ago, cavaliere, I was followed through the streets of Pianura by a greater crowd than the Duke ever drew after him! But what then? The voice goes—it lasts no longer than the bloom of a flower—and with it goes everything: fortune, credit, consideration, friends and parasites! Not eight years ago, sir—would you believe me?—I was supping nightly in private with the Bishop, who had nearly quarrelled with his late Highness for carrying me off by force one evening to his casino; I was heaped with dignities and favors; all the poets in the town composed sonnets in my honor; the Marquess of Trescorre fought a duel about me with the Bishop’s nephew, Don Serafino; I attended his lordship to Rome; I spent the villeggiatura at his villa, where I sat at play with the highest nobles in the land; yet when my voice went, cavaliere, it was on my knees I had to beg of my heartless patron the paltry favor of the minor orders!” Tears were running down the abate’s cheeks, and he paused to wipe them with a corner of his tattered bands.

      Though Odo had been bred in an abhorrence of the theatre the strange creature’s aspect so pricked his compassion that he asked him what he was now engaged in; at which Cantapresto piteously cried, “Alas, what am I not engaged in, if the occasion offers? For whatever a man’s habit, he will not wear it long if it cover an empty belly; and he that respects his calling must find food enough to continue in it. But as for me, sir, I have put a hand to every trade, from composing scenarios for the ducal company of Pianura to writing satirical sonnets for noblemen that desire to pass for wits. I’ve a pretty taste, too, in compiling almanacks, and when nothing else served I have played the public scrivener at the street corner; nay, sir, necessity has even driven me to hold the candle in one or two transactions I would not more actively have mixed in; and it was to efface the remembrance of one of these—for my conscience is still over-nice for my condition—that I set out on this laborious pilgrimage.”

      Much of this was unintelligible to Odo; but he was moved by any mention of Pianura, and in the abate’s first pause he risked the question—“Do you know the humpbacked boy Brutus?”

      His companion stared and pursed his soft lips. “Brutus—?” says he. “Brutus? Is he about the Duke’s person?”

      “He lives in the palace,” said Odo doubtfully.

      The fat ecclesiastic clapped a hand to his thigh. “Can it be your excellency has in mind the foundling boy Carlo Gamba? Does the jackanapes call himself Brutus now? He was always full of his classical allusions! Why, sir, I think I know him very well; he is even rumored to be a brother of Don Lelio Trescorre’s, and I believe the Duke has lately given him to the Marquess of Cerveno, for I saw him not long since in the Marquess’s livery at Pontesordo.”

      “Pontesordo?” cried Odo. “It was there I lived.”

      “Did you indeed, cavaliere? But I think you will have been at the Duke’s manor of that name; and it was the hunting-lodge on the edge of the chase that I had in mind. The Marquess uses it, I believe, as a kind of casino; though not without risk of a distemper. Indeed, there is much wonder at his frequenting it, and ‘tis said he does so against the Duke’s wishes.”

      The name of Pontesordo had set Odo’s memories humming like a hive of bees, and without heeding his companion’s allusions he asked—“And did you see the Momola?”

      The other looked his perplexity.

      “She’s an Innocent too,” Odo hastened to explain. “She is Filomena’s servant at the farm.”

      The abate at this, standing still in the road, screwed up his eyelids and protruded a relishing lip. “Eh, eh,” said he, “the girl from the farm, you say?” And he gave a chuckle. “You’ve an eye, cavaliere, you’ve an eye,” he cried, his soft body shaking with enjoyment; but before Odo could make a guess at his meaning their conversation was interrupted by a sharp call from the litter. The abate at once disappeared in the crowd, and