Still chiefly a man of pleasure, and the slave, as
always, of some rash infatuation, Alfieri was already shaking off the
intellectual torpor of his youth; and the first stirrings of his
curiosity roused an answering passion in Odo. Their tastes were indeed
divergent, for to that external beauty which was to Odo the very bloom
of life, Alfieri remained insensible; while of its imaginative
counterpart, its prolongation in the realm of thought and emotion, he
had but the most limited conception. But his love of ringing deeds woke
the chivalrous strain in Odo, and his vague celebration of Liberty, that
unknown goddess to whom altars were everywhere building, chimed with the
other's scorn of oppression and injustice. So far, it is true, their
companionship had been mainly one of pleasure; but the temper of both
gave their follies that provisional character which saves them from
vulgarity.
Odo, who had slept late on the morning after his friend's return, was
waked by the pompous mouthing of certain lines just then on every lip in
Italy:--
Meet was it that, its ancient seats forsaking,
An Empire should set forth with dauntless sail,
And braving tempests and the deep's betrayal,
Break down the barriers of inviolate worlds--
That Cortez and Pizarro should esteem
The blood of man a trivial sacrifice
When, flinging down from their ancestral thrones
Incas and Mexicans of royal line,
They wrecked two kingdoms to refresh thy palate--
They were the verses in which the abate Parini, in his satire of The
Morning, apostrophizes the cup of chocolate which the lacquey presents
to his master.
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