After the little Prince’s death, however, de Crucis had at once asked permission to leave Pianura.  He was perhaps not displeased by Odo’s expressions of surprise and disappointment; but they did not alter his decision.  He reminded the new Duke that he had been called to Pianura as governor to the late heir, and that, death having cut short his task, he had now no farther pretext for remaining.

Odo listened with a strange sense of loneliness.  The responsibilities of his new state weighed heavily on the musing speculative side of his nature.  Face to face with the sudden summons to action, with the necessity for prompt and not too-curious choice of means and method, he felt a stealing apathy of the will, an inclination toward the subtle duality of judgment that had so often weakened and diffused his energies.  At such a crisis it seemed to him that, de Crucis gone, he remained without a friend.  He urged the abate to reconsider his decision, begging him to choose a post about his person.

De Crucis shook his head.

“The offer,” said he, “is more tempting to me than your Highness can guess; but my business here is at an end, and must be taken up elsewhere.  My calling is that of a pedagogue.  When I was summoned to take charge of Prince Ferrante’s education I gave up my position in the household of Prince Bracciano not only because I believed that I could make myself more useful in training a future sovereign than the son of a private nobleman, but also,” he added with a smile, “because I was curious to visit a state of which your Highness had so often spoken, and because I believed that my residence here might enable me to be of service to your Highness.  In this I was not mistaken; and I will gladly remain in Pianura long enough to give your Highness such counsels as my experience suggests; but that business discharged, I must ask leave to go.”

From this position no entreaties could move him; and so fixed was his resolve that it confirmed the idea that he was still a secret agent of the Jesuits.  Strangely enough, this did not prejudice Odo, who was more than ever under the spell of de Crucis’s personal influence.  Though Odo had been acquainted with many professed philosophers he had never met among them a character so nearly resembling the old stoical ideal of temperance and serenity, and he could never be long with de Crucis without reflecting that the training which could form and nourish so noble a nature must be other than the world conceived it.

De Crucis, however, frankly pointed out that his former connection with the Jesuits was too well known in Pianura not to be an obstacle in the way of his usefulness.