"
"And I understand," added the Count, "that he would be glad to serve the
cavaliere in any capacity you might designate."
"Why not in all?" said the cicisbeo thoughtfully. "There would be
undoubted advantages to the cavaliere in possessing a servant who would
explain the globes while powdering his hair and not be above calling his
chair when he attended him to a lecture."
And the upshot of it was that when Odo, a few days later, entered on his
first term at the Academy, he was accompanied by the abate Cantapresto,
who had agreed, for a minimum of pay, to serve him faithfully in the
double capacity of pedagogue and lacquey.
The considerable liberty accorded the foreign students made Odo's first
year at the Academy at once pleasanter and less profitable than had he
been one of the regular pupils. The companions among whom he found
himself were a set of lively undisciplined young gentlemen, chiefly from
England, Russia and the German principalities; all in possession of more
or less pocket-money and attended by governors either pedantic and
self-engrossed or vulgarly subservient. These young sprigs, whose
ambition it was to ape the dress and manners of the royal pages, led a
life of dissipation barely interrupted by a few hours of attendance at
the academic classes. From the ill-effects of such surroundings Odo was
preserved by an intellectual curiosity that flung him ravening on his
studies. It was not that he was of a bookish habit, or that the drudgery
of the classes was less irksome to him than to the other pupils; but not
even the pedantic methods then prevailing, or the distractions of his
new life, could dull the flush of his first encounter with the past.
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