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As was usual with him, the impressions of the moment had effaced those preceding it, and it was almost with surprise that, at the rector's door, he beheld the primo soprano of Pianura totter forth to the litter and offer his knee as a step for the canonesses.
These pleasant spaces, which Odo had to himself save when the canonesses walked there to recite their rosary, he peopled with the knights and ladies of the novelle, and the fantastic beings of Pulci's epic: there walked the Fay Morgana, Regulus the loyal knight, the giant Morgante, Trajan the just Emperor and the proud figure of King Conrad; so that, escaping thither from the after-dinner dullness of the tapestry parlour, the boy seemed to pass from the most oppressive solitude to a world of warmth and fellowship.
Such an honour had never, in the history of the Community, been accorded even to the Canonesses, much less to a lay-sister. Surely Father Peter or the Prior? Had it been the Prioress herself, why then Few can remember the petrifying effect of a flash of sudden anger in the kindly eyes of Symon of Worcester. Mother Sub-Prioress will never forget it.
At that time he might have married a daughter of the Prince of Conde, but his father and his uncle objected to this match, because, since he was not rich, he would doubtless have been compelled to make some of his daughters canonesses, and certain chapters would have been unwilling to receive them on account of their illegitimate descent from Louis XIV. and Madame de Montespan.
This ready discourse, and the soprano's evident distress, so worked on the canonesses that, having little money at their disposal, it was fixed, after some private consultation, that he should attend them to Donnaz, where Don Gervaso, in consideration of his edifying conduct in renouncing the stage, might be interested in helping him to a situation; and when the little party set forth from Oropa, the abate Cantapresto closed the procession on one of the baggage-mules, with Odo riding pillion at his back.
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