“But not only does the Church anticipate every tendency of mankind; alone of all powers she knows how to control and direct the passions she excites.  This it is which makes her an auxiliary that no temporal prince can well despise.  It is in this aspect that I would have your Highness consider her.  Do not underrate her power because it seems based on the commoner instincts rather than on the higher faculties of man.  That is one of the sources of her strength.  She can support her claims by reason and argument, but it is because her work, like that of her divine Founder, lies chiefly among those who can neither reason nor argue, that she chooses to rest her appeal on the simplest and most universal emotions.  As, in our towns, the streets are lit mainly by the tapers before the shrines of the saints, so the way of life would be dark to the great multitude of men but for the light of faith burning within them...”

Meanwhile the shufflings of destiny had brought to Trescorre the prize for which he waited.  During the Duke’s illness he had been appointed regent of Pianura, and his sovereign’s reluctance to take up the cares of government had now left him for six months in authority.  The day after the proclaiming of the constitution Odo had withdrawn his signature from it, on the ground that the concessions it contained were inopportune.  The functions of government went on again in the old way.  The old abuses persisted, the old offences were condoned:  it was as though the apathy of the sovereign had been communicated to his people.  Centuries of submission were in their blood, and for two generations there had been no warfare south of the Alps.

For the moment men’s minds were turned to the great events going forward in France.  It had not yet occurred to the Italians that the recoil of these events might be felt among themselves.  They were simply amused spectators, roused at last to the significance of the show, but never dreaming that they might soon be called from the wings to the footlights.  To de Crucis, however, the possibility of such a call was already present, and it was he who pressed the Duke to return to his post.  A deep reluctance held Odo back.  He would have liked to linger on in the monastery, leading the tranquil yet busy life of the monks, and trying to read the baffling riddle of its completeness.  At that moment it seemed to him of vastly more importance to discover the exact nature of the soul—­whether it was in fact a metaphysical entity, as these men believed, or a mere secretion of the brain, as he had been taught to think—­than to go back and govern his people.  For what mattered the rest, if he had been mistaken about the soul?

With a start he realised that he was going as his cousin had gone—­that this was but another form of the fatal lethargy that hung upon his race.  An effort of the will drew him back to Pianura, and made him resume the semblance of authority; but it carried him no farther.  Trescorre ostensibly became prime minister, and in reality remained the head of the state.  The Duke was present at the cabinet meetings but took no part in the direction of affairs.  His mind was lost in a maze of metaphysical speculations; and even these served him merely as some cunningly-contrived toy with which to trick his leisure.