h. In this society of polished dilettanti
such documents were valued rather for their literary merits than for
their political significance; and the pungent lines in which the Duke's
panaceas were hit off (the Belverde figuring among them as a Lenten
diet, a dinner of herbs, and a wonder-working bone) caused a flutter of
professional envy in the episcopal circle.

The Bishop received company every evening; and Odo soon found that, as
Gamba had said, it was the best company in Pianura. His lordship lived
in great state in the Gothic palace adjoining the Cathedral. The gloomy
vaulted rooms of the original structure had been abandoned to the small
fry of the episcopal retinue. In the chambers around the courtyard his
lordship drove a thriving trade in wines from his vineyards, while his
clients awaited his pleasure in the armoury, where the panoplies of his
fighting predecessors still rusted on the walls. Behind this facade a
later prelate had built a vast wing overlooking a garden which descended
by easy terraces to the Piana. In the high-studded apartments of this
wing the Bishop held his court and lived the life of a wealthy secular
nobleman. His days were agreeably divided between hunting, inspecting
his estates, receiving the visits of antiquarians, artists and literati,
and superintending the embellishments of his gardens, then the most
famous in North Italy; while his evenings were given to the more private
diversions which his age and looks still justified. In religious
ceremonies or in formal intercourse with his clergy he was the most
imposing and sacerdotal of bishops; but in private life none knew better
how to disguise his cloth. He was moreover a man of parts, and from the
construction of a Latin hexameter to the growing of a Holland bulb, had
a word worth hearing on all subjects likely to engage the dilettante. A
liking soon sprang up between Odo and this versatile prelate; and in the
retirement of his lordship's cabinet, or pacing with him the
garden-alleys set with ancient marbles, the young man gathered many
precepts of that philosophy of pleasure which the great churchmen of the
eighteenth century practised with such rare completeness.

The Bishop had not, indeed, given much thought to the problems which
most deeply engaged his companion. His theory of life took no account of
the future and concerned itself little with social conditions outside
his own class; but he was acquainted with the classical scho