illared Olympus, filled his mind with a misty pageant of
immortals. These moments of high emotion were interspersed with hours of
plodding over the Latin grammar and the textbooks of philosophy and
logic. Books were unknown ground to Cantapresto, and among masters and
pupils there was not one who could help Odo to the meaning of his task,
or who seemed aware that it might have a meaning. To most of the lads
about him the purpose of the Academy was to fit young gentlemen for the
army or the court; to give them the chance of sweating a shirt every
morning with the fencing-master and of learning to thread the
intricacies of the court minuet. They modelled themselves on the dress
and bearing of the pages, who were always ruffling it about the
quadrangle in court dress and sword, or booted and spurred for a day's
hunting at the King's chase of Stupinigi. To receive a nod or a word
from one of these young demigods on his way to the King's opera-box or
just back from a pleasure-party at her Majesty's villa above the Po--to
hear of their tremendous exploits and thrilling escapades--seemed to put
the whole school in touch with the fine gentleman's world of intrigue,
cards and duelling: the world in which ladies were subjugated, fortunes
lost, adversaries run through and tradesmen ruined with that
imperturbable grace which distinguished the man of quality from the
plebeian.

Among the privileges of the foreign pupils were frequent visits to the
royal theatre; and here was to Odo a source of unimagined joys. His
superstitious dread of the stage (a sentiment, he soon discovered, that
not even his mother's director shared) made his heart beat oppressively
as he first set foot in the theatre. It was a gala night, boxes and
stalls were thronged, and the audience-hall unfolded its glittering
curves like some poisonous flower enveloping him in rich malignant
fragrance. This impression was dispelled by the rising of the curtain on
a scene of such Claude-like loveliness as it would have been impossible
to associate with the bug-bear tales of Donnaz or with the coarse antics
of the comedians at Chivasso. A temple girt with mysterious shade,
lifting its colonnade above a sunlit harbour; and before the temple,
vine-wreathed nymphs waving their thyrsi through the turns of a
melodious dance--such was the vision that caught up Odo and swept him
leagues away from the rouged and starred assemblage gathered in the
boxes to gossip, flirt, eat ices