ith
Fulvia; but the unforgiving humour which had lent her a transitory charm
now became as disfiguring as some physical defect; and his heart swelled
with the defiance of youthful disappointment.

It was near the angelus when they entered the city. Just within the
gates Odo set down his companions, who took leave of him, the one with
the heartiest expressions of gratitude, the other with a hurried
inclination of her veiled head. Thence he drove on to the Three Crowns,
where he designed to lie. The streets were still crowded with
holiday-makers and decked out with festal hangings. Tapestries and
silken draperies adorned the balconies of the houses, innumerable tiny
lamps framed the doors and windows, and the street-shrines were dressed
with a profusion of flowers; while every square and open space in the
city was crowded with booths, with the tents of ambulant comedians and
dentists, and with the outspread carpets of snake-charmers,
posture-makers and jugglers. Among this mob of quacks and pedlars
circulated other fantastic figures, the camp-followers of the army of
hucksters: dwarfs and cripples, mendicant friars, gypsy fortune-tellers,
and the itinerant reciters of Ariosto and Tasso. With these mingled the
towns-people in holiday dress, the well-to-do farmers and their wives,
and a throng of nondescript idlers, ranging from the servants of the
nobility pushing their way insolently through the crowd, to those
sinister vagabonds who lurk, as it were, in the interstices of every
concourse of people.

It was not long before the noise and animation about him had dispelled
Odo's ill-humour. The world was too fair to be darkened by a girl's
disdain, and a reaction of feeling putting him in tune with the humours
of the market-place, he at once set forth on foot to view the city. It
was now near sunset and the day's decline irradiated the stately front
of the Cathedral, the walls of the ancient Hospital that faced it, and
the groups gathered about the stalls and platforms obstructing the
square. Even in his travelling-dress Odo was not a figure to pass
unnoticed, and he was soon assailed by laughing compliments on his looks
and invitations to visit the various shows concealed behind the flapping
curtains of the tents. There were enough pretty faces in the crowd to
justify such familiarities, and even so modest a success was not without
solace to his vanity. He lingered for some time in the square, answering
the banter of the