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Updated: September 14, 2025
Odo's impatience to be gone increased with every delay, and at length he determined to go forward at all adventure, leaving Cantapresto to conclude the preparations and overtake him later.
Odo knew that he would probably be followed and his movements reported to the authorities; but he was almost equally certain that there would be no active interference in his affairs. What chiefly puzzled him was Alfieri's insistence that Cantapresto should not be privy to the adventure.
And the upshot of it was that when Odo, a few days later, entered on his first term at the Academy, he was accompanied by the abate Cantapresto, who had agreed, for a minimum of pay, to serve him faithfully in the double capacity of pedagogue and lacquey.
He had become so accomplished a servant that he seemed a sixth sense of his master's; and when the latter prepared to start on his travels Cantapresto took his usual seat in the chaise.
Here, at his beck were the genial realities of life, embodied, humorously enough, in the bustling figure which for so many years had played a kind of comic accompaniment to his experiences. Cantapresto was in a fever of expectation.
The actual circumstances of his escape were still wrapped in mystery: he could only conjecture that the Duchess, foreseeing the course events would take, had planned with Cantapresto to save him in spite of himself.
Half an hour later he rode up to the house where he lodged in the Piazza San Carlo. In the archway Cantapresto, heavy with a nine years' accretion of fat, laid an admonishing hand on his bridle. "Cavaliere, the Countess's black boy " "Well?" "Three several times has battered the door down with a missive." "Well?"
A half-melancholy interest drew him back to the scene of his lonely childhood, and he had started early in order to push on that night to Pontesordo. At Valsecca, the regular posting-station between Vercelli and Pianura, he sent Cantapresto forward to the capital, and in a stormy yellow twilight drove alone across the waste land that dipped to the marshes.
His past seemed to look at him with unrecognising eyes, to bar the door against his knock; and he rode away saddened by that sense of isolation which follows the first encounter with a forgotten self. At Ivrea the sight of Cantapresto and the travelling-carriage roused him as from a waking dream.
"Imbecile, not to have told me before! Quick, Antonio my gloves, my sword." Odo, flushed and animated, buckled his sword-belt with impatient hands. "Write anything anything to free my evening. Tomorrow morning tomorrow morning I shall wait on the lady. Let Antonio carry her a nosegay with my compliments. Did you see him Cantapresto? Was he in good health? Does he sup at home? He left no message?
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