Of all this none could have been less conscious than the lad just
preparing to enter on his studies at the Royal Academy of Turin. That
institution, adjoining the royal palace, was a kind of nursery or
forcing-house for the budding nobility of Savoy. In one division of the
sumptuous building were housed his Majesty's pages, a corps of luxurious
indolent young fops; another wing accommodated the regular students of
the Academy, sons of noblemen and gentlemen destined for the secular
life, while a third was set aside for the "forestieri" or students from
foreign countries and from the other Italian states. To this quarter Odo
Valsecca was allotted; though it was understood that on leaving the
Academy he was to enter the Sardinian service.
It was customary for a young gentleman of Odo's rank to be attended at
the Academy not only by a body-servant but by a private governor or
pedant, whose business it was to overlook his studies, attend him
abroad, and have an eye to the society he frequented. The old Marquess
of Donnaz had sent his daughter, by Odo's hand, a letter recommending
her to select her son's governor with particular care, choosing rather a
person of grave behaviour and assured morality than one of your glib
ink-spatterers who may know the inside of all the folios in the King's
library without being the better qualified for the direction of a young
gentleman's conduct; and to this letter Don Gervaso appended the terse
postcript: "Your excellency is especially warned against according this
or any other position of trust to the merry-andrew who calls himself the
abate Cantapresto.
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