r's
flesh seemed to present certain obstacles either to his jaws or his
palate, and that his appetite lingered on the fried chicken-livers and
tunny-fish in oil; but he cast such looks at Donna Laura as seemed to
declare that for her sake he would willingly have risked his teeth on
the very cobblestones of the court. Knowing how she pined for company,
Odo was not surprised at his mother's complaisance; yet wondered to see
the smile with which she presently received the Count's half-bantering
disparagement of Pianura. For the duchy, by his showing, was a place of
small consequence, an asylum of superannuated fashions; whereas no
Frenchman of quality ever visited Turin without exclaiming on its
resemblance to Paris, and vowing that none who had the entree of
Stupinigi need cross the Alps to see Versailles. As to the Marquess's
depriving the court of Donna Laura's presence, their guest protested
against it as an act of overt disloyalty to the sovereign; and what most
surprised Odo, who had often heard his grandfather declaim against the
Count as a cheap jackanapes that hung about the court for what he could
make at play, was the indulgence with which the Marquess received his
visitor's sallies. Father and daughter in fact vied in amenities to the
Count. The fire was kept alight all day in his rooms, his Monsu waited
on with singular civility by the steward, and Donna Laura's own woman
sent down by her mistress to prepare his morning chocolate.

Next day it was agreed the gentlemen should ride to Valdu; but its lord
being as stiff-jointed as a marionette, Donna Laura, with charming tact,
begged to be of the party, and thus enabled him to attend her in her
litter. The Marquess thereupon called on Odo to ride with him; and
setting forth across the mountain they descended by a long defile to the
half-ruined village of Valdu. Here, for the first time, Odo saw the
spectacle of a neglected estate, its last penny wrung from it for the
absent master's pleasure by a bailiff who was expected to extract his
pay from the sale of clandestine concessions to the tenants. Riding
beside the Marquess, who swore under his breath at the ravages of the
undyked stream and the sight of good arable land run wild and choked
with underbrush, the little boy obtained a precocious insight into the
evils of a system which had long outlived its purpose, and the idea of
feudalism was ever afterward embodied for him in his glimpse of the
peasants of Valdu