He had known moments of happiness since; moments when he believed in himself and in his calling, and felt himself indeed the man she thought him.  That was in the exaltation of the first months, when his opportunities had seemed as boundless as his dreams, and he had not yet learned that the sovereign’s power may be a kind of spiritual prison to the man.  Since then, indeed, he had known another kind of happiness, had been aware of a secret voice whispering within him that she was right and had chosen wisely for him; but this was when he had realised that he lived in a prison, and had begun to admire the sumptuous adornment of its walls.  For a while the mere external show of power amused him, and his imagination was charmed by the historic dignity of his surroundings.  In such a setting, against the background of such a past, it seemed easy to play the benefactor and friend of the people.  His sensibility was touched by the contrast, and he saw himself as a picturesque figure linking the new dreams of liberty and equality to the feudal traditions of a thousand years.  But this masquerading soon ceased to divert him.  The round of court ceremonial wearied him, and books and art lost their fascination.  The more he varied his amusements the more monotonous they became, the more he crowded his life with petty duties the more empty of achievement it seemed.

At first he had hoped to bury his personal disappointments in the task of reconstructing his little state; but on every side he felt a mute resistance to his efforts.  The philosophical faction had indeed poured forth pamphlets celebrating his reforms, and comparing his reign to the return of the Golden Age.  But it was not for the philosophers that he laboured; and the benefits of free speech, a free press, a secular education did not, after all, reach those over whom his heart yearned.  It was the people he longed to serve; and the people were hungry, were fever-stricken, were crushed with tithes and taxes.  It was hopeless to try to reach them by the diffusion of popular knowledge.  They must first be fed and clothed; and before they could be fed and clothed the chains of feudalism must be broken.

Men like Gamba and Andreoni saw this clearly enough; but it was not from them that help could come.  The nobility and clergy must be coaxed or coerced into sympathy with the new movement; and to accomplish this exceeded Odo’s powers.  In France, the revolt from feudalism had found some of its boldest leaders in the very class that had most to lose by the change; but in Italy fewer causes were at work to set such disinterested passions in motion.  South of the Alps liberalism was merely one of the new fashions from France:  the men ran after the pamphlets from Paris as the women ran after the cosmetics; and the politics went no deeper than the powder.  Even among the freest intellects liberalism resulted in a new way of thinking rather in a new way of living.  Nowhere among the better classes was there any desire