but mercenaries scarred in the service of its enemies.  For generations, for centuries, man had fought on; crying for liberty, dreaming it was won, waking to find himself the slave of the new forces he had generated, burning and being burnt for the same beliefs under different guises, calling his instinct ideas and his ideas revelations; destroying, rebuilding, falling, rising, mending broken weapons, championing extinct illusions, mistaking his failures for achievements and planting his flag on the ramparts as they fell.  And as the vision of this inveterate conflict rose before him, Odo saw that the beauty, the power, the immortality, dwelt not in the idea but in the struggle for it.

His resistance yielded as this sense stole over him, and with an almost physical relief he felt himself drawn once more into the familiar current of emotion.  Yes, it was better after all to be one of that great unconquerable army, though, like the Trojans fighting for a phantom Helen, they might be doing battle for the shadow of a shade; better to march in their ranks, endure with them, fight with them, fall with them, than to miss the great enveloping sense of brotherhood that turned defeat to victory.

As the conviction grew in him, Fulvia’s words regained their lost significance.  Through the set mask of language the living thoughts looked forth, old indeed as the world, but renewed with the new life of every heart that bore them.  She had left the abstract and dropped to concrete issues:  to the gift of the constitution, the benefits and obligations it implied, the new relations it established between ruler and subject and between man and man.  Odo saw that she approached the question without flinching.  No trace remained of the trembling woman who had clung to him the night before.  Her old convictions repossessed her and she soared above human fears.

So engrossed was he that he had been unaware of a growing murmur of sound which seemed to be forcing its way from without through the walls of the ancient building.  As Fulvia’s oration neared its end the murmur rose to a roar.  Startled faces were turned toward the doors of the council-chamber, and one of the Duke’s gentlemen left his seat and made his way through the audience.  Odo sat motionless, his eyes on Fulvia.  He noticed that her face paled as the sound reached her, but there was no break in the voice with which she uttered the closing words of her peroration.  As she ended, the noise was momentarily drowned under a loud burst of clapping; but this died in a hush of apprehension through which the outer tumult became more ominously audible.  The equerry reentered the hall with a disordered countenance.  He hastened to the Duke and addressed him urgently.

“Your Highness,” he said, “the crowd has thickened and wears an ugly look.  There are many friars abroad, and images of the Mountain Virgin are being carried in procession.  Will your Highness be pleased to remain here while I summon an escort from the barracks?”