here is that fabulous personage, by the way?"

Odo at this retreated hastily behind the soprano; but a pretty girl
catching sight of him, he found himself dragged into the centre of the
company, who hailed him with fantastic obeisances. Supper meanwhile was
being laid on the greasy table down the middle of the room. The Matamor,
who seemed the director of the troupe, thundered out his orders for
maccaroni, fried eels and sausages; the inn-servants flanked the plates
with wine-flasks and lumps of black bread, and in a moment the hungry
comedians, thrusting Odo into a high seat at the head of the table, were
falling on the repast with a prodigious clatter of cutlery.

Of the subsequent incidents of the feast--the banter of the younger
women, the duenna's lachrymose confidences, the incessant interchange of
theatrical jargon and coarse pleasantry--there remained to Odo but a
confused image, obscured by the smoke of guttering candles, the fumes of
wine and the stifling air of the low-ceilinged tavern. Even the face of
the pretty girl who had dragged him from his concealment, and who now
sat at his side, plying him with sweets from her own plate, began to
fade into the general blur; and his last impression was of Cantapresto's
figure dilating to immense proportions at the other end of the table, as
the soprano rose with shaking wine-glass to favour the company with a
song. The chorus, bursting forth in response, surged over Odo's drowning
senses, and he was barely aware, in the tumult of noise and lights, of
an arm slipped about him, a softly-heaving pillow beneath his head, and
the gradual subsidence into dark delicious peace.

So, on the first night of his new life, the heir-presumptive of Pianura
fell asleep with his head in a dancing-girl's breast.

1.8.

The travellers were to journey by Vettura from Chivasso to Turin; and
when Odo woke next morning the carriage stood ready in the courtyard.

Cantapresto, mottled and shamefaced, with his bands awry and an air of
tottering dignity, was gathering their possessions together, and the
pretty girl who had pillowed Odo's slumbers now knelt by his bed and
laughingly drew on his stockings. She was a slim brown morsel, not much
above his age, with a glance that flitted like a bird, and round
shoulders slipping out of her kerchief. A wave of shyness bathed Odo to
the forehead as their eyes met: he hung his head stupidly and turned
away when she fetched the comb to dress his