He
understood at last Alfieri's allusion to a face for the sight of which
men were ready to lay down their lives; and if, as he walked home before
dawn, those heavenly lineaments were blent in memory with features of a
mortal cast, yet these were pure and grave enough to stand for the image
of the goddess.
2.4.
Professor Orazio Vivaldi, after filling with distinction the chair of
Philosophy at the University of Turin, had lately resigned his office
that he might have leisure to complete a long-contemplated work on the
Origin of Civilisation. His house was the meeting-place of a society
calling itself of the Honey-Bees and ostensibly devoted to the study of
the classical poets, from whose pages the members were supposed to cull
mellifluous nourishment; but under this guise the so-called literati had
for some time indulged in free discussion of religious and scientific
questions. The Academy of the Honey-Bees comprised among its members all
the independent thinkers of Turin: doctors of law, of philosophy and
medicine, chemists, philologists and naturalists, with one or two
members of the nobility, who, like Alfieri, felt, or affected, an
interest in the graver problems of life, and could be trusted not to
betray the true character of the association.
These details Odo learned the next day from Alfieri; who went on to say
that, owing to the increased vigilance of the government, and to the
banishment of several distinguished men accused by the Church of
heretical or seditious opinions, the Honey-Bees had of late been obliged
to hold their meetings secretly, it being even rumoured that Vivaldi,
who was their president, had resigned his professorship and withdrawn
behind the shelter of literary employment in order to elude the
observation of the authorities.
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