ver,
the question solved itself; for as the aunts descended at the door of
the rector's lodging, the porter, running to meet them, stumbled on a
black mass under the arcade, and raised the cry that here was a man
dropped dead. A crowd gathering, some one called out that it was an
ecclesiastic had fallen; whereat the great-aunts were hurrying forward
when Odo whispered the eldest, Donna Livia, that the sick man was indeed
an abate from Pianura. Donna Livia immediately bid her servants lift him
into the porter's lodge, where, with the administering of spirits, the
poor soprano presently revived and cast a drowning glance about the
chamber.

"Eight years ago, illustrious ladies," he gurgled, "I had nearly died
one night of a surfeit of ortolans; and now it is of a surfeit of
emptiness that I am perishing."

The ladies at this, with exclamations of pity, called on the
lay-brothers for broth and cordials, and bidding the porter enquire more
particularly into the history of the unhappy ecclesiastic, hastened away
with Odo to the rector's parlour.

Next morning betimes all were afoot for the procession, which the
canonesses were to witness from the monastery windows. The apothecary
had brought word that the abate, whose seizure was indeed the result of
hunger, was still too weak to rise; and Donna Livia, eager to open her
devotions with an act of pity, pressed a sequin in the man's hand, and
bid him spare no care for the sufferer's comfort.

This sent Odo in a cheerful mood to the red-hung windows, whence,
peering between the folds of his aunts' gala habits, he admired the
great court enclosed in nobly-ordered cloisters and strewn with fresh
herbs and flowers. Thence one of the rector's chaplains conducted them
to the church, placing them, in company with the monastery's other noble
guests, in a tribune constructed above the choir. It was Odo's first
sight of a great religious ceremony, and as he looked down on the church
glimmering with votive offerings and gold-fringed draperies, and seen
through rolling incense in which the altar-candles swam like stars
reflected in a river, he felt an almost sensual thrill of pleasure at
the thought that his life was to be passed amid scenes of such mystic
beauty. The sweet singing of the choir raised his spirit to a higher
view of the scene; and the sight of the huddled misery on the floor of
the church revived in him the old longing for the Franciscan cowl.

From these raptures he