***

The ceremonies over, the long procession was formed again and set out toward the city.  The crowd had surged ahead, and when the Duke rode through the gates the streets were already thronged.  Moving slowly between the compact mass of people he felt himself as closely observed as on the day of his state entry; but with far different effect.  Enthusiasm had given way to a cold curiosity.  The excitement of the spectators had spent itself in the morning, and the sight of their sovereign failed to rouse their flagging ardour.  Now and then a cheer broke out, but it died again without kindling another in the uninflammable mass.  Odo could not tell how much of this indifference was due to a natural reaction from the emotions of the morning, how much to his personal unpopularity, how much to the ominous impression produced by the falling of the Virgin’s crown.  He rode between his people oppressed by a sense of estrangement such as he had never known.  He felt himself shut off from them by an impassable barrier of superstition and ignorance; and every effort to reach them was like the wrong turn in a labyrinth, drawing him farther away from the issue to which it seemed to lead.

As he advanced under this indifferent or hostile scrutiny, he thought how much easier it would be to face a rain of bullets than this withering glare of criticism.  A sudden longing to escape, to be done with it all, came over him with sickening force.  His nerves ached with the physical strain of holding himself upright on his horse, of preserving the statuesque erectness proper to the occasion.  He felt like one of his own ancestral effigies, of which the wooden framework had rotted under the splendid robes.  A congestion at the head of a narrow street had checked the procession, and he was obliged to rein in his horse.  He looked about and found himself in the centre of the square near the Baptistery.  A few feet off, directly in a line with him, was the weather-worn front of the Royal Printing-Press.  He raised his head and saw a group of people on the balcony.  Though they were close at hand, he saw them in a blur, against which Fulvia’s figure suddenly detached itself.  She had told him that she was to view the procession with the Andreonis; but through the mental haze which enveloped him her apparition struck a vague surprise.  He looked at her intently, and their eyes met.  A faint happiness stole over her face, but no recognition was possible, and she continued to gaze out steadily upon the throng below the balcony.  Involuntarily his glance followed hers, and he saw that she was herself the centre of the crowd’s attention.  Her plain, almost Quakerish habit, and the tranquil dignity of her carriage, made her a conspicuous figure among the animated groups in the adjoining windows, and Odo, with the acuteness of perception which a public life develops, was instantly aware that her name was on every lip.  At the same moment he saw a woman close to his horse’s feet