Since
his accession Odo, out of respect for the late Duke, had lodged in one
of the wings of the great building; but tradition demanded that he
should henceforth inhabit the ducal apartments, and thither, at the
close of the day's ceremonies, his gentlemen had conducted him.
Trescorre had asked permission to wait on him before he slept; and he
knew that the prime minister would be kept late by his conference with
the secret police, whose nightly report could not be handed in till the
festivities were over. Meanwhile Odo was in no mood for sleep. He sat
alone in the closet, still hung with saints' images and jewelled
reliquaries, where his cousin had so often given him audience, and
whence, through the open door, he could see the embroidered curtains and
plumed baldachin of the state bed which was presently to receive him.
All day his heart had beat with high ambitions; but now a weight sank
upon his spirit. The reaction from the tumultuous welcome of the streets
to the closely-guarded silence of the palace made him feel how unreal
was the fancied union between himself and his people, how insuperable
the distance that tradition and habit had placed between them. In the
narrow closet where his predecessor had taken refuge from the detested
task of reigning, the new Duke felt the same moral lassitude steal over
him. How was such a puny will as his to contend against the great forces
of greed and prejudice? All the influences arrayed against
him--tradition, superstition, the lust of power, the arrogance of
race--seemed concentrated in the atmosphere of that silent room, with
its guarded threshold, its pious relics, and lying on the desk in the
embrasure of the window, the manuscript litany which the late Duke had
not lived to complete.
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