In March of the second year the old Marquess, returning from Turin, was accompanied, to the surprise of all, by the fantastical figure of an elderly gentleman in the richest travelling dress, with one of the new French toupets, a thin wrinkled painted face, and emitting with every movement a prodigious odour of millefleurs.  This visitor, who was attended by his French barber and two or three liveried servants, the Marquess introduced as the lord of Valdu, a neighbouring seigneurie of no great account.  Though his lands marched with the Marquess’s, it was years since the Count had visited Donnaz, being one of the King’s chamberlains and always in attendance on his Majesty; and it was amazing to see with what smirks and grimaces, and ejaculations in Piedmontese French, he complimented the Marchioness on her appearance, and exclaimed at the magnificence of the castle, which must doubtless have appeared to him little better than a cattle-grange.  His talk was unintelligible to Odo, but there was no mistaking the nature of the glances he fixed on Donna Laura, who, having fled to her room on his approach, presently descended in a ravishing new sacque, with an air of extreme surprise, and her hair curled (as Odo afterward learned) by the Count’s own barber.

Odo had never seen his mother look handsomer.  She sparkled at the Count’s compliments, embraced her father, playfully readjusted her mother’s coif, and in the prettiest way made their excuses to the Count for the cold draughts and bare floors of the castle.  “For having lived at court myself,” said she, “I know to what your excellency is accustomed, and can the better value your condescension in exposing yourself, at this rigorous season, to the hardships of our mountain-top.”

The Marquess at this began to look black, but seeing the Count’s pleasure in the compliment, contented himself with calling out for dinner, which, said he, with all respect to their visitor, would stay his stomach better than the French kick-shaws at his Majesty’s table.  Whether the Count was of the same mind, it was impossible to say, though Odo could not help observing that the stewed venison and spiced boar’s flesh seemed to present certain obstacles either to his jaws or his palate, and that his appetite lingered on the fried chicken-livers and tunny-fish in oil; but he cast such looks at Donna Laura as seemed to declare that for her sake he would willingly have risked his teeth on the very cobblestones of the court.  Knowing how she pined for company, Odo was not surprised at his mother’s complaisance; yet wondered to see the smile with which she presently received the Count’s half-bantering disparagement of Pianura.  For the duchy, by his showing, was a place of small consequence, an asylum of superannuated fashions; whereas no Frenchman of quality ever visited Turin without exclaiming on its resemblance to Paris, and vowing that none who had the entree of Stupinigi need cross the Alps to see Versailles.  As to the Marquess’s