learned, eight hundred poor labourers, exasperated by want, had petitioned his Highness to relieve them of the corvee; but though they had raised fifteen hundred scudi to bribe the court official who was to present their address, no reply had ever been received.  In the city itself, the monopoly of corn and tobacco weighed heavily on the merchants, and the strict censorship of the press made the open ventilation of wrongs impossible, while the Duke’s sbirri and the agents of the Holy Office could drag a man’s thoughts from his bosom and search his midnight dreams.  The Church party, in the interest of their order, fostered the Duke’s fears of sedition and branded every innovator as an atheist; the Holy Office having even cast grave doubts on the orthodoxy of a nobleman who had tried to introduce the English system of ploughing on his estates.  It was evident to Odo that the secret hopes of the reformers centred in him, and the consciousness of their belief was sweeter than love in his bosom.  It diverted him from the follies of his class, fixed his thoughts at an age when they are apt to range, and thus slowly shaped and tempered him for high uses.

In this fashion the weeks passed and summer came.  It was the Duchess’s habit to escape the August heats by retiring to the dower-house on the Piana, a league beyond the gates; but the little prince being still under the care of the German physician, who would not consent to his removal, her Highness reluctantly lingered in Pianura.  With the first leafing of the oaks Odo’s old love for the budding earth awoke, and he rode out daily in the forest toward Pontesordo.  It was but a flat stretch of shade, lacking the voice of streams and the cold breath of mountain-gorges:  a wood without humours or surprises; but the mere spring of the turf was delightful as he cantered down the grass alleys roofed with level boughs, the outer sunlight just gilding the lip of the long 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 in Crescenti’s study.  One of these solitary rides brought him without premeditation to a low building on the fenny edge of the wood.  It was a small house, added, it appeared, to an ancient brick front adorned with pilasters, perhaps a fragment of some woodland temple.  The door-step was overgrown with a stealthy green moss and tufted with giant fennel; and a shutter swinging loose on its hinge gave a glimpse of inner dimness.  Odo guessed at once that this was the hunting lodge where Cerveno had found his death; and as he stood looking out across the oozy secrets of the marsh, the fever seemed to hang on his steps.  He turned away with a shiver; but whether it were the sullen aspect of the house, or the close way in which the wood embraced it, the place suddenly laid a detaining hand upon him.  It was as though he had reached the heart of solitude.  Even the faint woodland noises seemed to recede from that dense circle of shade, and the marsh turned a dead eye to heaven.