It seemed indeed too beautiful to be
real, and he trembled, as he sometimes did at the music of the Easter
mass, when the hunchback, laughing at his amazement, led him down the
terrace steps.
It was Odo's lot in after years to walk the alleys of many a splendid
garden, and to pace, often wearily enough, the paths along which he was
now led; but never after did he renew the first enchanted impression of
mystery and brightness that remained with him as the most vivid emotion
of his childhood.
Though it was February the season was so soft that the orange and lemon
trees had been put out in their earthen vases before the lemon-house,
and the beds in the parterres were full of violets, daffodils and
auriculas; but the scent of the orange-blossoms and the bright colours
of the flowers moved Odo less than the noble ordonnance of the pleached
alleys, each terminated by a statue or a marble seat; and when he came
to the grotto where, amid rearing sea-horses and Tritons, a cascade
poured from the grove above, his wonder passed into such delicious awe
as hung him speechless on the hunchback's hand.
"Eh," said the latter with a sneer, "it's a finer garden than we have at
our family palace. Do you know what's planted there?" he asked, turning
suddenly on the little boy. "Dead bodies, cavaliere! Rows and rows of
them; the bodies of my brothers and sisters, the Innocents who die like
flies every year of the cholera and the measles and the putrid fever.
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