hat any debt incurred to a seducer was null and void, and
that she was entitled to a hundred scudi of damages for having been led
into sin."

2.10.

At the Duke's express wish, Odo was to lodge in the palace; and when he
entered the courtyard he found Cantapresto waiting to lead him to his
apartment.

The rooms assigned to him lay at the end of one of the wings overlooking
the gardens; and as he mounted the great stairway and walked down the
corridors with their frescoed walls and busts of Roman emperors he
recalled the far-off night when he had passed through the same scenes as
a frightened awe-struck child. Where he had then beheld a supernatural
fabric, peopled with divinities of bronze and marble, and glowing with
light and colour, he now saw a many-corridored palace, stately indeed,
and full of a faded splendour, but dull and antiquated in comparison
with the new-fangled elegance of the Sardinian court. Yet at every turn
some object thrilled the fibres of old association or pride of race.
Here he traversed a gallery hung with the portraits of his line; there
caught a glimpse of the pages' antechamber through which he and his
mother had been led when they waited on the Duke; and from the windows
of his closet he overlooked the alleys and terraces where he had
wandered with the hunchback.

One of the Duke's pages came to say that his Highness would receive the
cavaliere when the court rose from dinner; and finding himself with two
hours on his hands, Odo determined to await his kinsman's summons in the
garden. Thither he presently repaired; and was soon, with a mournful
pleasure, retracing the paths he had first explored in such an ecstasy
of wonder. The pleached walks and parterres were in all the freshness of
June. Roses and jasmine mingled on the terrace-walls, citron-trees
ingeniously grafted with red and white carnations stood in Faenza jars
before the lemon-house, and marble nymphs and fauns peeped from thickets
of flowering camellias. A noise of childish voices presently attracted
Odo, and following a tunnel of clipped limes he came out on a theatre
cut in the turf and set about with statues of Apollo and the Muses. A
handful of boys in military dress were performing a series of evolutions
in the centre of this space; and facing them stood a child of about ten
years, in a Colonel's uniform covered with orders, his hair curled and
powdered, a paste-board sword in his hand, and his frail body supported
on