So oppressive were these obligations that
many of the peasants, forsaking their farms, enrolled themselves in the
mendicant orders, thus actually strengthening the hand of their
oppressors. Of legislative redress there was no hope, and the Duke was
inaccessible to all but his favourites. The previous year, as Odo
learned, eight hundred poor labourers, exasperated by want, had
petitioned his Highness to relieve them of the corvee; but though they
had raised fifteen hundred scudi to bribe the court official who was to
present their address, no reply had ever been received. In the city
itself, the monopoly of corn and tobacco weighed heavily on the
merchants, and the strict censorship of the press made the open
ventilation of wrongs impossible, while the Duke's sbirri and the agents
of the Holy Office could drag a man's thoughts from his bosom and search
his midnight dreams. The Church party, in the interest of their order,
fostered the Duke's fears of sedition and branded every innovator as an
atheist; the Holy Office having even cast grave doubts on the orthodoxy
of a nobleman who had tried to introduce the English system of ploughing
on his estates. It was evident to Odo that the secret hopes of the
reformers centred in him, and the consciousness of their belief was
sweeter than love in his bosom. It diverted him from the follies of his
class, fixed his thoughts at an age when they are apt to range, and thus
slowly shaped and tempered him for high uses.
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