United States or Tuvalu ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Cantapresto, in a new black coat and ruffles, was conspicuously taking snuff from the tortoiseshell box which the Countess's cicisbeo had given him; but Odo saw that he took less pleasure in the spectacle than in the fact of accompanying the heir-presumptive of Pianura to a gala performance at the royal theatre; and the lads about them were for the most part engaged either with their own dress and appearance, or in exchanging greetings with the royal pages and the older students.
Odo, who had accompanied Cantapresto to the water-side, was listening to these assurances and to the soprano's vain invectives, when a well-dressed young man stepped up to the group.
Tears were running down the abate's cheeks, and he paused to wipe them with a corner of tattered bands. Though Odo had been bred in an abhorrence of the theatre, the strange creature's aspect so pricked his compassion that he asked him what he was now engaged in; at which Cantapresto piteously cried, "Alas, what am I not engaged in, if the occasion offers?
Cantapresto, looking after him, caught sight of the flowers and kicked them aside with a contemptuous toe. "I sometimes think he botanises," he murmured with a shrug. "The Lord knows what queer notions he gets out of all these books!" As an infusion of fresh blood to Odo were Alfieri's meteoric returns to Turin.
"My daughter," said he, "has been trained to face graver emergencies with an equanimity I have no fear of putting to the touch 'the calm of a mind blest in the consciousness of its virtue'; and were it not that circumstances are somewhat pressing " he broke off and glanced at Cantapresto, who was fidgeting about Odo's carriage or talking in undertones with the driver of the chaise.
Odo sprang up and slipped his arms into the dress-tunic his servant had brought him. "Write anything. Say that I am suddenly summoned by " "By the Count Alfieri?" Cantapresto suggested. "Count Alfieri? Is he here? He has returned?" "He arrived an hour ago, cavaliere. He sent you this Moorish scimitar with his compliments. I understand he comes recently from Spain."
Cantapresto, though he might have guessed Odo's intention, was not privy to his plan of rejoining Vivaldi and Fulvia; and it flashed across the young man that his self-betrayal must confirm the others' suspicions.
The travellers were to journey by Vettura from Chivasso to Turin; and when Odo woke next morning the carriage stood ready in the courtyard. Cantapresto, mottled and shamefaced, with his bands awry and an air of tottering dignity, was gathering their possessions together, and the pretty girl who had pillowed Odo's slumbers now knelt by his bed and laughingly drew on his stockings.
"I shall never be Duke," he cried, "and I shall never forget you!" And with that he turned and kissed her boldly and then bolted down the stairs like a hare. And all that day he scorched and froze with the thought that perhaps she had been laughing at him. Cantapresto was torpid after the feast, and Odo detected in him an air of guilty constraint.
At the Duke's express wish, Odo was to lodge in the palace; and when he entered the courtyard he found Cantapresto waiting to lead him to his apartment.
Word Of The Day