It was strange to pass from this scene to the solitude of the grove, where, in a twilight rustling with streams, the chapels lifted their white porches.  Peering through the grated door of each little edifice, Odo beheld within a group of terra-cotta figures representing some scene of the Passion—­here a Last Supper, with a tigerish Judas and a Saint John resting his yellow curls on his Master’s bosom, there an Entombment or a group of stricken Maries.  These figures, though rudely modelled and daubed with bright colours, yet, by a vivacity of attitude and gesture which the mystery of their setting enhanced, conveyed a thrilling impression of the sacred scenes set forth; and Odo was yet at an age when the distinction between flesh-and-blood and its plastic counterfeits is not clearly defined, or when at least the sculptured image is still a mysterious half-sentient thing, denizen of some strange borderland between art and life.  It seemed to him, as he gazed through the chapel gratings, that those long-distant episodes of the divine tragedy had been here preserved in some miraculous state of suspended animation, and as he climbed from one shrine to another he had the sense of treading the actual stones of Gethsemane and Calvary.

As was usual with him, the impressions of the moment had effaced those preceding it, and it was almost with surprise that, at the rector’s door, he beheld the primo soprano of Pianura totter forth to the litter and offer his knee as a step for the canonesses.  The charitable ladies cried out on him for this imprudence, and his pallor still giving evidence of distress, he was bidden to wait on them after supper with his story.  He presented himself promptly in the parlour, and being questioned as to his condition at once rashly proclaimed his former connection with the ducal theatre of Pianura.  No avowal could have been more disastrous to his cause.  The canonesses crossed themselves with horror, and the abate, seeing his mistake, hastened to repair it by exclaiming—­“What, ladies, would you punish me for following a vocation to which my frivolous parents condemned me when I was too young to resist their purpose?  And have not my subsequent sufferings, my penances and pilgrimages, and the state to which they have reduced me, sufficiently effaced the record of an involuntary error?”

Seeing the effect of this appeal the abate made haste to follow up his advantage.  “Ah, illustrious ladies,” he cried, “am I not a living example of the fate of those who leave all to follow righteousness?  For while I remained on the stage, among the most dissolute surroundings, fortune showered me with every benefit she heaps on her favourites.  I had my seat at every table in Pianura; the Duke’s chair to carry me to the theatre; and more money than I could devise how to spend; while now that I have resigned my calling to embrace the religious life, you see me reduced to begging a crust from the very mendicants I formerly nourished.  For,” said he, moved to tears by his own recital, “my superfluity was always spent in buying the prayers of the unfortunate, and to judge how I was esteemed by those acquainted with my private behaviour you need only learn that, on my renouncing the stage, ’twas the Bishop of Pianura who himself accorded me the tonsure.”