ke's father had expressed the most recent tendency
of the race by the erection of a chapel in the florid Jesuit style; and
the group of buildings thus chronicled in rich durable lines the varying
passions and ambitions of three hundred years of power.

As Odo followed his guide toward the Duke's apartments he remarked a
change in the aspect of the palace. Where formerly the corridors had
been thronged with pages, lacqueys and gaily-dressed cavaliers and
ladies, only a few ecclesiastics now glided by: here a Monsignore in
ermine and lace rochet, attended by his chaplain and secretaries, there
a cowled Dominican or a sober-looking secular priest. The Duke was
lodged in the oldest portion of the palace, and Odo, who had never
visited these apartments, looked with interest at the projecting
sculptured chimney and vaulted ceiling of the pages' ante-chamber, which
had formerly been the guardroom and was still hung with panoplies.
Thence he was led into a gallery lined with scriptural tapestries and
furnished in the heavy style of the seventeenth century. Here he waited
a few moments, hearing the sound of conversation in the room beyond;
then the door of this apartment opened, and a handsome Dominican passed
out, followed by a page who invited Odo to step into the Duke's cabinet.

This was a very small room, completely panelled in delicate wood-carving
touched with gold. Over this panelling, regardless of the beauty of its
design, had been hung a mass of reliquaries and small devotional
bas-reliefs and paintings, making the room appear more like the chapel
of a wonder-working saint than a prince's closet. Here again Odo found
himself alone; but the page presently returned to say that his Highness
was not well and begged the cavaliere to wait on him in his bed-chamber.

The most conspicuous object in this room was a great bedstead raised on
a dais. The plumed posts and sumptuous hangings of the bed gave it an
altar-like air, and the Duke himself, who lay between the curtains, his
wig replaced by a nightcap, a scapular about his neck, and his
shrivelled body wrapped in a brocaded dressing-gown, looked more like a
relic than a man. His heavy under-lip trembled slightly as he offered
his hand to Odo's salute.

"You find me, cousin," said he after a brief greeting, "much troubled by
a question that has of late incessantly disturbed my rest--can the soul,
after full intuition of God, be polluted by the sins of the body?" he
clutc