Odo listened with a
saddened heart, thinking, as he followed his host through the perfumed
shade of the gardens, and down the long saloon at the end of which the
Venus stood, of those who for the love of man had denied themselves such
delicate emotions and gone forth cheerfully to exile or imprisonment.
These were the true lovers of the Lady Poverty, the band in which he
longed to be enrolled; yet how restrain a thrill of delight as the
slender dusky goddess detached herself against the cool marble of her
niche, looking, in the sun-rippled green penumbra of the saloon, with a
sound of water falling somewhere out of sight, as though she had just
stepped dripping from the wave?
In the Duchess's company life struck another gait. Here was no waiting
on subtle pleasures, but a headlong gallop after the cruder sort.
Hunting, gaming and masquerading filled her Highness's days; and Odo had
felt small inclination to keep pace with the cavalcade, but for the
flying huntress at its head. To the Duchess's "view halloo" every drop
of blood in him responded; but a vigilant image kept his bosom barred.
So they rode, danced, diced together, but like strangers who cross hands
at a veglione. Once or twice he fancied the Duchess was for unmasking;
but her impulses came and went like fireflies in the dusk, and it suited
his humour to remain a looker-on.
So life piped to him during his first days at Pianura: a merry tune in
the Bishop's company, a mad one in the Duchess's; but always with the
same sad undertone, like the cry of the wind on a warm threshold.
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