4.7.

Never before had Odo so keenly felt the difference between theoretical visions of liberty and their practical application.  His deepest heart-searchings showed him as sincerely devoted as ever to the cause which had enlisted his youth.  He still longed above all things to serve his fellows; but the conditions of such service were not what he had dreamed.  How different a calling it had been in Saint Francis’s day, when hearts inflamed with the new sense of brotherhood had but to set forth on their simple mission of almsgiving and admonition!  To love one’s neighbour had become a much more complex business, one that taxed the intelligence as much as the heart, and in the course of which feeling must be held in firm subjection to reason.  He was discouraged by Fulvia’s inability to understand the change.  Hers was the missionary spirit; and he could not but reflect how much happier she would have been as a nun in a charitable order, a unit in some organised system of beneficence.

He too would have been happier to serve than to command!  But it is not given to the lovers of the Lady Poverty to choose their special rank in her household.  Don Gervaso’s words came back to him with deepening significance, and he thought how truly the old chaplain’s prayer had been fulfilled.  Honour and power had come to him, and they had abased him to the dust.  The “Humilitas” of his fathers, woven, carved and painted on every side, pursued him with an ironical reminder of his impotence.

Fulvia had not been mistaken in attributing his depression of spirit to de Crucis’s visit.  It was the first time that de Crucis had returned to Pianura since the new Duke’s accession.  Odo had welcomed him eagerly, had again pressed him to remain; but de Crucis was on his way to Germany, bound on some business which could not be deferred.  Odo, aware of the renewed activity of the Jesuits, supposed that this business was connected with the flight of the French refugees, many of whom were gone to Coblentz; but on this point the abate was silent.  Of the state of affairs in France he spoke openly and despondently.  The immoderate haste with which the reforms had been granted filled him with fears for the future.  Odo knew that Crescenti shared these fears, and the judgment of these two men, with whom he differed on fundamental principles, weighed with him far more than the opinions of the party he was supposed to represent.  But he was in the case of many greater sovereigns of his day.  He had set free the waters of reform, and the frail bark of his authority had been torn from its moorings and swept headlong into the central current.

The next morning, to his surprise, the Duchess sent one of her gentlemen to ask an audience.  Odo at once replied that he would wait on her Highness; and a few moments later he was ushered into his wife’s closet.