In religious
ceremonies or in formal intercourse with his clergy he was the most
imposing and sacerdotal of bishops; but in private life none knew better
how to disguise his cloth. He was moreover a man of parts, and from the
construction of a Latin hexameter to the growing of a Holland bulb, had
a word worth hearing on all subjects likely to engage the dilettante. A
liking soon sprang up between Odo and this versatile prelate; and in the
retirement of his lordship's cabinet, or pacing with him the
garden-alleys set with ancient marbles, the young man gathered many
precepts of that philosophy of pleasure which the great churchmen of the
eighteenth century practised with such rare completeness.
The Bishop had not, indeed, given much thought to the problems which
most deeply engaged his companion. His theory of life took no account of
the future and concerned itself little with social conditions outside
his own class; but he was acquainted with the classical schools of
thought, and, having once acted as the late Duke's envoy to the French
court, had frequented the Baron d'Holbach's drawing-room and
familiarised himself with the views of the Encyclopaedists; though it
was clear that he valued their teachings chiefly as an argument against
asceticism.
"Life," said he to Odo, as they sat one afternoon in a garden-pavilion
above the river, a marble Mercury confronting them at the end of a vista
of clipped myrtle, "life, cavaliere, is a stock on which we may graft
what fruit or flower we choose.
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