Even the people, in whose behalf these sacrifices were made, looked
askance at his diminished state, and showed a perverse sympathy with the
dispossessed officials who had taken so picturesque a part in the public
ceremonials of the court. All Odo's philosophy could not fortify him
against such disillusionments. He felt the lack of Fulvia's
unquestioning faith not only in the abstract beauty of the new ideals
but in their immediate adaptability to the complex conditions of life.
Only a woman's convictions, nourished on sentiment and self-sacrifice,
could burn with that clear unwavering flame: his own beliefs were at the
mercy of every wind of doubt or ingratitude that blew across his
unsheltered sensibilities.
It was more than a year since he had had news of Fulvia. For a while
they had exchanged letters, and it had been a consolation to tell her of
his struggles and experiments, of his many failures and few results. She
had encouraged him to continue the struggle, had analysed his various
plans of reform, and had given her enthusiastic support to the
partitioning of the Bishop's fief and the secularisation of the
University. Her own life, she said, was too uneventful to write of; but
she spoke of the kindness of her hosts, the Professor and his wife, of
the simple unceremonious way of living in the old Calvinist city, and of
the number of distinguished persons drawn thither by its atmosphere of
intellectual and social freedom.
Odo suspected a certain colourlessness in the life she depicted.
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