une of Parini's satire, a puny doll condemned, as the strings of
custom pulled, to feign the gestures of immortal passions.

2.3.

The night was moonless, with cold dashes of rain, and though the streets
of Turin were well-lit no lantern-ray reached the windings of the lane
behind the Corpus Domini.

As Odo, alone under the wall of the church, awaited his friend's
arrival, he wondered what risk had constrained the reckless Alfieri to
such unwonted caution. Italy was at that time a vast network of
espionage, and the Piedmontese capital passed for one of the
best-policed cities in Europe; but even on a moonless night the law
distinguished between the noble pleasure-seeker and the obscure
delinquent whose fate it was to pay the other's shot. Odo knew that he
would probably be followed and his movements reported to the
authorities; but he was almost equally certain that there would be no
active interference in his affairs. What chiefly puzzled him was
Alfieri's insistence that Cantapresto should not be privy to the
adventure. The soprano had long been the confidant of his pupil's
escapades, and his adroitness had often been of service in intrigues
such as that on which Odo now fancied himself engaged. The place, again,
perplexed him: a sober quarter of convents and private dwellings, in the
very eye of the royal palace, scarce seeming the theatre for a light
adventure. These incongruities revived his former wonder; nor was this
dispelled by Alfieri's approach.

The poet, masked and unattended, rejoined his friend without a word; and
Odo guessed in him an eye and ear alert for pursuit. Guided by the
pressure of his arm, Odo was hurried round the bend of the lane, up a
transverse alley and across a little square lost between high shuttered
buildings. Alfieri, at his first word, gripped his arm with a backward
glance; then urged him on under the denser blackness of an arched
passage-way, at the end of which an oil-light glimmered. Here a gate in
a wall confronted them. It opened at Alfieri's tap and Odo scented wet
box-borders and felt the gravel of a path under foot. The gate was at
once locked behind them and they entered the ground-floor of a house as
dark as the garden. Here a maid-servant of close aspect met them with a
lamp and preceded them upstairs to a bare landing hung with charts and
portulani. On Odo's flushed anticipations this antechamber, which seemed
the approach to some pedant's cabinet, had an effect un