Afterward, as order was born out of chaos, and he began to thread his way among the centuries, this first vision lost something of its intensity; yet it was always, to the last, through the eye that Rome possessed him.  Her life, indeed, as though in obedience to such a setting, was an external, a spectacular business, from the wild animation of the cattle-market in the Forum or the hucksters’ traffic among the fountains of the Piazza Navona, to the pompous entertainments in the cardinals’ palaces and the ever-recurring religious ceremonies and processions.  Pius VI., in the reaction from Ganganelli’s democratic ways, had restored the pomp and ceremonial of the Vatican with the religious discipline of the Holy Office; and never perhaps had Rome been more splendid on the surface or more silent and empty within.  Odo, at times, as he moved through some assemblage of cardinals and nobles, had the sensation of walking through a huge reverberating palace, decked out with all the splendours of art but long since abandoned of men.  The superficial animation, the taste for music and antiquities, all the dilettantisms of an idle and irresponsible society, seemed to him to shrivel to dust in the glare of that great past that lit up every corner of the present.

Through his own connections, and the influence of de Crucis, he saw all that was best not only among the nobility, but in that ecclesiastical life now more than ever predominant in Rome.  Here at last he was face to face with the mighty Sphinx, and with the bleaching bones of those who had tried to guess her riddle.  Wherever he went these “lost adventurers” walked the streets with him, gliding between the Princes of the Church in the ceremonies of Saint Peter’s and the Lateran, or mingling in the company that ascended the state staircase at some cardinal’s levee.

He met indeed many accomplished and amiable ecclesiastics, but it seemed to him that the more thoughtful among them had either acquired their peace of mind at the cost of a certain sensitiveness, or had taken refuge in a study of the past, as the early hermits fled to the desert from the disorders of Antioch and Alexandria.  None seemed disposed to face the actual problems of life, and this attitude of caution or indifference had produced a stagnation of thought that contrasted strongly with the animation of Sir William Hamilton’s circle in Naples.  The result in Odo’s case was a reaction toward the pleasures of his age; and of these Rome had but few to offer.  He spent some months in the study of the antique, purchasing a few good examples of sculpture for the Duke, and then, without great reluctance, set out for Monte Alloro.

Here he found a changed atmosphere.  The Duke welcomed him handsomely, and bestowed the highest praise on the rarities he had collected; but for the moment the court was ruled by a new favourite, to whom Odo’s coming was obviously unwelcome.  This adroit adventurer, whose name was soon to become notorious throughout Europe, had taken the old prince by his darling weaknesses, and Odo, having no mind to share in the excesses of the precious couple, seized the first occasion to set out again on his travels.