All these the Marchioness must visit, and attend to her
devotions between; the ladies being governed by a dark-faced priest,
their chaplain and director, who kept them perpetually running along the
cold stone corridors to the chapel in a distant wing, where they knelt
without so much as a brazier to warm them or a cushion to their knees.
As to the chapel, though larger and loftier than that of Pontesordo,
with a fine carved and painted tabernacle and many silver candlesticks,
it seemed to Odo, by reason of its bare walls, much less beautiful than
that deserted oratory; nor did he, amid all the novelty of his
surroundings, cease to regret the companionship of his familiar images.
His delight was the greater, therefore, when, exploring a part of the
castle now quite abandoned, he came one day on a vaulted chamber used as
a kind of granary, where, under layers of dirt and cobwebs, lovely
countenances flowered from the walls. The scenes depicted differed
indeed from those of Pontesordo, being less animated and homely and more
difficult for a child to interpret; for here were naked laurel-crowned
knights on prancing horses, nimble goat-faced creatures grouped in
adoration round a smoking altar and youths piping to saffron-haired
damsels on grass-banks set with poplars. The very strangeness of the
fable set forth perhaps engaged the child's fancy; or the benignant
mildness of the countenances, so unlike the eager individual faces of
the earlier artist; for he returned again and again to gaze unweariedly
on the inhabitants of that tranquil grassy world, studying every inch of
the walls and with much awe and fruitless speculation deciphering on the
hem of a floating drapery the inscription: Bernardinus Lovinus pinxit.
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