Here, after dinner, Don Lelio took leave of Odo's mother, with small
show of regret on either side; the lady high and sarcastic, the
gentleman sullen and polite; and both, as it seemed, easier when the
business was despatched and the Count's foot in the stirrup. He had so
far taken little notice of Odo, but he now bent from the saddle and
tapped the boy's cheek, saying in his cold way: "In a few years I shall
see you at court;" and with that rode away toward Pianura.
1.4.
Lying that night at Pavia, the travellers set forward next morning for
the city of Vercelli. The road, though it ran for the most part through
flat mulberry orchards and rice-fields reflecting the pale blue sky in
their sodden channels, would yet have appeared diverting enough to Odo,
had his mother been in the mood to reply to his questions; for whether
their carriage overtook a party of strolling jugglers, travelling in a
roofed-in waggon, with the younger children of the company running
alongside in threadbare tights and trunkhose decked with tinsel; or
whether they drove through a village market-place, where yellow earthen
crocks and gaudy Indian cottons, brass pails and braziers and platters
of bluish pewter, filled the stalls with a medley of colour--at every
turn was something that excited the boy's wonder; but Donna Laura, who
had fallen into a depression of spirits, lamenting the cold, her
misfortunes and the discomfort of the journey, was at no more pains than
the abate to satisfy the promptings of his curiosity.
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