Cantapresto was torpid after the feast, and Odo detected in him an air of guilty constraint.  The boy was glad enough to keep silence, and they rolled on without speaking through the wide glowing landscape.  Already the nearness of a great city began to make itself felt.  The bright champaign was scattered over with farm-houses, their red-tiled pigeon-cots and their granges latticed with openwork terra-cotta pleasantly breaking the expanse of maize and mulberry; villages lay along the banks of the canals intersecting the plain; and the hills beyond the Po were planted with villas and monasteries.

All the afternoon they drove between umbrageous parks and under the walls of terraced vineyards.  It was a region of delectable shade, with glimpses here and there of gardens flashing with fountains and villa roofs decked with statues and vases; and at length, toward sunset, a bend of the road brought them out on a fair-spreading city, so flourishing in buildings, so beset with smiling hills, that Odo, springing from his seat, cried out in sheer joy of the spectacle.

They had still the suburbs to traverse; and darkness was falling when they entered the gates of Turin.  This brought the fresh amazement of wide lamplit streets, clean and bright as a ball-room, lined with palaces and filled with well-dressed loungers:  officers in the brilliant Sardinian uniforms, fine gentlemen in French tie-wigs and narrow-sleeved coats, merchants hurrying home from business, ecclesiastics in high-swung carriages, and young bloods dashing by in their curricles.  The tables before the coffee-houses were thronged with idlers taking their chocolate and reading the gazettes; and here and there the arched doorway of a palace showed some gay party supping al fresco in a garden hung with lamps.

The flashing of lights and the noise of the streets roused Cantapresto, who sat up with a sudden assumption of dignity.

“Ah, cavaliere,” said he, “you now see a great city, a famous city, a city aptly called ‘the Paris of Italy.’  Nowhere else shall you find such well-lit streets, such fair pavements, shops so full of Parisian wares, promenades so crowded with fine carriages and horses.  What a life a young gentleman may lead here!  The court is hospitable, society amiable, the theatres are the best-appointed in Italy.”

Here Cantapresto paused with a deprecating cough.

“Only one thing is necessary,” he went on, “to complete enjoyment of the fruits of this garden of Eden; and that is”—­he coughed again—­“discretion.  His Majesty, cavaliere, is a father to his subjects; the Church is their zealous mother; and between two such parents, and the innumerable delegates of their authority, why, you may fancy, sir, that a man has to wear his eyes on all sides of his head.  Discretion is a virtue the Church herself commends; it is natural, then, that she should afford her children full opportunity to practise it.  And look you, cavaliere, it is like gymnastics:  the younger you acquire it, the less effort it costs.  Our Maker Himself has taught us the value of silence by putting us speechless into the world:  if we learn to talk later we do it at our own risk!  But for your own part, cavaliere—­since the habit cannot too early be exercised—­I would humbly counsel you to say nothing to your illustrious parents of our little diversion of last evening.”