Such regrets, however, their arrival at the castle soon effaced; for in the doorway stood the old Marquess, a letter in hand, who springing forward caught his grandson by the shoulders, and cried with his great boar-hunting shout, “Cavaliere, you are heir-presumptive of Pianura!”

1.7.

The Marquess of Cerveno had succumbed to the tertian ague contracted at the hunting-lodge of Pontesordo; and this unforeseen calamity left but one life, that of the sickly ducal infant, between Odo and the succession to the throne of Pianura.  Such was the news conveyed post-haste from Turin by Donna Laura; who added the Duke’s express wish that his young kinsman should be fitted for the secular career, and the information that Count Valdu had already entered his stepson’s name at the Royal Academy of Turin.

The Duke of Pianura being young and in good health, and his wife having already given him an heir, the most sanguine imagination could hardly view Odo as being brought much nearer the succession; yet the change in his condition was striking enough to excuse the fancy of those about him for shaping the future to their liking.  The priestling was to turn courtier and perhaps soldier; Asti was to be exchanged for Turin, the seminary for the academy; and even the old chief of Donnaz betrayed in his grumbling counsels to the boy a sense of the exalted future in which they might some day serve him.

The preparations of departure and the wonder of his new state left Odo little space wherein to store his thought with impressions of what he was leaving; and it was only in after years, when the accretion of superficial incident had dropped from his past, that those last days at Donnaz gained their full distinctness.  He saw them then, heavy with the warmth of the long summer, from the topmost pine-belt to the bronzed vineyards turning their metallic clusters to the sun; and in the midst his small bewildered figure, netted in a web of association, and seeming, as he broke away, to leave a shred of himself in every corner of the castle.

Sharpest of all, there remained with him the vision of his last hour with Don Gervaso.  The news of Odo’s changed condition had been received in silence by the chaplain.  He was not the man to waste words and he knew the futility of asserting the Church’s claim to the heir-presumptive of a reigning house.  Therefore if he showed no enthusiasm he betrayed no resentment; but, the evening before the boy’s departure, led him, still in silence, to the chapel.  Here the priest knelt with Odo; then, raising him, sat on one of the benches facing the high altar, and spoke a few grave words.