1.5.
Reluctantly, every year about the Epiphany, the old Marquess rode down
from Donnaz to spend two months in Turin. It was a service exacted by
King Charles Emanuel, who viewed with a jealous eye those of his nobles
inclined to absent themselves from court and rewarded their presence
with privileges and preferments. At the same time the two canonesses
descended to their abbey in the plain, and thus with the closing in of
winter the old Marchioness, Odo and his mother were left alone in the
castle.
To the Marchioness this was an agreeable period of spiritual compunction
and bodily repose; but to Donna Laura a season of despair. The poor
lady, who had been early removed from the rough life at Donnaz to the
luxurious court of Pianura, and was yet in the fulness of youth and
vivacity, could not resign herself to an existence no better, as she
declared, than that of any herdsman's wife upon the mountains. Here was
neither music nor cards, scandal nor love-making; no news of the
fashions, no visits from silk-mercers or jewellers, no Monsu to curl her
hair and tempt her with new lotions, or so much as a strolling
soothsayer or juggler to lighten the dullness of the long afternoons.
The only visitors to the castle were the mendicant friars drawn thither
by the Marchioness's pious repute; and though Donna Laura disdained not
to call these to her chamber and question them for news, yet their
country-side scandals were no more to her fancy than the two-penny wares
of the chapmen who unpacked their baubles on the kitchen hearth.
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