nesses' litter was a safe distance ahead he began
to beguile the way with fragments of reminiscence and adventure. Though
few of his allusions were clear to Odo, the glimpse they gave of the
motley theatrical life of the north Italian cities--the quarrels between
Goldoni and the supporters of the expiring commedia dell' arte--the
rivalries of the prime donne and the arrogance of the popular
comedians--all these peeps into a tinsel world of mirth, cabal and
folly, enlivened by the recurring names of the Four Masks, those
lingering gods of the older dispensation, so lured the boy's fancy and
set free his vagrant wonder, that he was almost sorry to see the keep of
Donnaz reddening in the second evening's sunset.

Such regrets, however, their arrival at the castle soon effaced; for in
the doorway stood the old Marquess, a letter in hand, who springing
forward caught his grandson by the shoulders, and cried with his great
boar-hunting shout, "Cavaliere, you are heir-presumptive of Pianura!"

1.7.

The Marquess of Cerveno had succumbed to the tertian ague contracted at
the hunting-lodge of Pontesordo; and this unforeseen calamity left but
one life, that of the sickly ducal infant, between Odo and the
succession to the throne of Pianura. Such was the news conveyed
post-haste from Turin by Donna Laura; who added the Duke's express wish
that his young kinsman should be fitted for the secular career, and the
information that Count Valdu had already entered his stepson's name at
the Royal Academy of Turin.

The Duke of Pianura being young and in good health, and his wife having
already given him an heir, the most sanguine imagination could hardly
view Odo as being brought much nearer the succession; yet the change in
his condition was striking enough to excuse the fancy of those about him
for shaping the future to their liking. The priestling was to turn
courtier and perhaps soldier; Asti was to be exchanged for Turin, the
seminary for the academy; and even the old chief of Donnaz betrayed in
his grumbling counsels to the boy a sense of the exalted future in which
they might some day serve him.

The preparations of departure and the wonder of his new state left Odo
little space wherein to store his thought with impressions of what he
was leaving; and it was only in after years, when the accretion of
superficial incident had dropped from his past, that those last days at
Donnaz gained their full distinctness. He saw them the