As a first step towards replenishing
the treasury the Duke had declared himself ready to limit his private
expenditure to a fixed sum; and he now asked the Duchess to pledge
herself in the same manner. Maria Clementina, since her uncle's death,
had been in receipt of a third of the annual revenues of Monte Alloro.
This should have enabled her to pay her debts and put some dignity and
order into her establishment; but the first year's income had gone in
the building of a villa on the Piana, in imitation of the country-seats
along the Brenta; the second was spent in establishing a menagerie of
wild animals like that of the French Queen at Versailles; and rumour had
it that the Duchess carried her imitation of her royal cousin so far as
to be involved in an ugly quarrel with her jewellers about a necklace
for which she owed a thousand ducats.
All these reports had of course reached Odo; but he still hoped that an
appeal to her love of dominion might prove stronger than the habit of
self-indulgence. He said to himself that nothing had ever been done to
rouse her ambition, that hitherto, if she had meddled in politics, it
had been merely from thwarted vanity or the desire to gratify some
personal spite. Now he hoped to take her by higher passions, and by
associating her with his own schemes to utilise her dormant energies.
For the first moments she listened with the strained fixity of a child;
then her attention flickered and died out. The life-long habit of
referring every question to a personal standpoint made it difficult for
her to follow a general argument, and she leaned back with the resigned
eyelids of piety under the pulpit.
Pages:
431
432
433
434
435
436
437
438
439
440
441
442
443
444
445
446
447
448
449
450
451
452
453
454
455