The Valley of Decision

3.1.

It was at Naples, some two years later, that the circumstances of his flight were recalled to Odo Valsecca by the sound of a voice which at once mysteriously connected itself with the incidents of that wild night.

He was seated with a party of gentlemen in the saloon of Sir William Hamilton’s famous villa of Posilipo, where they were sipping the ambassador’s iced sherbet and examining certain engraved gems and burial-urns recently taken from the excavations.  The scene was such as always appealed to Odo’s fancy:  the spacious room, luxuriously fitted with carpets and curtains in the English style, and opening on a prospect of classical beauty and antique renown; in his hands the rarest specimens of that buried art which, like some belated golden harvest, was now everywhere thrusting itself through the Neapolitan soil; and about him men of taste and understanding, discussing the historic or mythological meaning of the objects before them, and quoting Homer or Horace in corroboration of their guesses.

Several visitors had joined the party since Odo’s entrance; and it was from a group of these later arrivals that the voice had reached him.  He looked round and saw a man of refined and scholarly appearance, dressed en abbe, as was the general habit in Rome and Naples, and holding in one hand the celebrated blue vase cut in cameo which Sir William had recently purchased from the Barberini family.

“These reliefs,” the stranger was saying, “whether cut in the substance itself, or afterward affixed to the glass, certainly belong to the Grecian period of cameo-work, and recall by the purity of their design the finest carvings of Dioskorides.”  His beautifully-modulated Italian was tinged by a slight foreign accent, which seemed to connect him still more definitely with the episode his voice recalled.  Odo turned to a gentleman at his side and asked the speaker’s name.

“That,” was the reply, “is the abate de Crucis, a scholar and cognoscente, as you perceive, and at present attached to the household of the Papal Nuncio.”

Instantly Odo beheld the tumultuous scene in the Duke’s apartments, and heard the indictment of Heiligenstern falling in tranquil accents from the very lips which were now, in the same tone, discussing the date of a Greek cameo vase.  Even in that moment of disorder he had been struck by the voice and aspect of the agent of the Holy Office, and by a singular distinction that seemed to set the man himself above the coil of passions in which his action was involved.  To Odo’s spontaneous yet reflective temper there was something peculiarly impressive in the kind of detachment which implies, not obtuseness or indifference, but a higher sensitiveness disciplined by choice.  Now he felt a renewed pang of regret that such qualities should be found in the service of the opposition; but the feeling was not incompatible with a wish to be more nearly acquainted with their possessor.

The two years elapsing since Odo’s departure from Pianura had widened if they had not lifted his outlook.  If he had lost something of his early enthusiasm he had exchanged it for a larger experience of cities and men, and for the self-command born of varied intercourse.  He had reached a point where he was able to survey his past dispassionately and to disentangle the threads of the intrigue in which he had so nearly lost his footing.  The actual circumstances of his escape were still wrapped in mystery:  he could only conjecture that the Duchess, foreseeing the course events would take, had planned with Cantapresto to save him in spite of himself.  His nocturnal flight down the river had carried him to Ponte di Po, the point where the Piana flows into the Po, the latter river forming for a few miles the southern frontier of the duchy.  Here his passport had taken him safely past the customs-officer, and following the indications of the boatman, he had found, outside the miserable village clustered about the customs, a travelling-chaise which brought him before the next night-fall to Monte Alloro.

Of the real danger from which this timely retreat had removed him, Gamba’s subsequent letters had brought ample proof.  It was indeed mainly against himself that both parties, perhaps jointly, had directed their attack; designing to take him in the toils ostensibly prepared for the Illuminati.  His evasion known, the Holy Office had contented itself with imprisoning Heiligenstern in one of the Papal fortresses near the Adriatic, while his mistress, though bred in the Greek confession, was confined in a convent of the Sepolte Vive and his Oriental servant sent to the Duke’s galleys.  As to those suspected of affiliations with the forbidden sect, fines and penances were imposed on a few of the least conspicuous, while the chief offenders, either from motives of policy or thanks to their superior adroitness, were suffered to escape without a reprimand.  After this, Gamba’s letters reported, the duchy had lapsed into its former state of quiescence.  Prince Ferrante had been seriously ailing since the night of the electrical treatment, but the Pope having sent his private physician to Pianura, the boy had rallied under the latter’s care.  The Duke, as was natural, had suffered an acute relapse of piety, spending his time in expiatory pilgrimages to the various votive churches of the duchy, and declining to transact any public business till he should have compiled with his own hand a calendar of the lives of the saints, with the initial letters painted in miniature, which he designed to present to his Holiness at Easter.

Meanwhile Odo, at Monte Alloro, found himself in surroundings so different from those he had left that it seemed incredible they should exist in the same world.  The Duke of Monte Alloro was that rare survival of a stronger age, a cynic.  In a period of sentimental optimism, of fervid enthusiasms and tearful philanthropy, he represented the pleasure-loving prince of the Renaissance, crushing his people with taxes but dazzling them with festivities; infuriating them by his disregard of the public welfare, but fascinating them by his good looks, his tolerance of old abuses, his ridicule of the monks, and by the careless libertinage which had founded the fortunes of more than one middle-class husband and father—­for the Duke always paid well for what he appropriated.  He had grown old in his pleasant sins, and these, as such raiment will, had grown old and dingy with him; but if no longer splendid he was still splendour-loving, and drew to his court the most brilliant adventurers of Italy.  Spite of his preference for such company, he had a nobler side, the ruins of a fine but uncultivated intelligence, and a taste for all that was young, generous and high in looks and courage.  He was at once drawn to Odo, who instinctively addressed himself to these qualities, and whose conversation and manners threw into relief the vulgarity of the old Duke’s cronies.  The latter was the shrewd enough to enjoy the contrast at the expense of his sycophants’ vanity; and the cavaliere Valsecca was for a while the reigning favourite.  It would have been hard to say whether his patron was most tickled by his zeal for economic reforms, or by his faith in the perfectibility of man.  Both these articles of Odo’s creed drew tears of enjoyment from the old Duke’s puffy eyes; and he was never tired of declaring that only his hatred for his nephew of Pianura induced him to accord his protection to so dangerous an enemy of society.

Odo at first fancied that it was in response to a mere whim of the Duke’s that he had been despatched to Monte Alloro; but he soon perceived that the invitation had been inspired by Maria Clementina’s wish.  Some three months after Odo’s arrival, Cantapresto suddenly appeared with a packet of letters from the Duchess.  Among them her Highness had included a few lines to Odo, whom she briefly adjured not to return to Pianura, but to comply in all things with her uncle’s desires.  Soon after this the old Duke sent for Odo, and asked him how his present mode of life agreed with his tastes.  Odo, who had learned that frankness was the surest way to the Duke’s favour, replied that, while nothing could be more agreeable than the circumstances of his sojourn at Monte Alloro, he must own to a wish to travel when the occasion offered.

“Why, this is as I fancied,” replied the Duke, who held in his hand an open letter on which Odo recognised Maria Clementina’s seal.  “We have always,” he continued, “spoken plainly with each other, and I will not conceal from you that it is for your best interests that you should remain away from Pianura for the present.  The Duke, as you doubtless divine, is anxious for your return, and her Highness, for that very reason, is urgent that you should prolong your absence.  It is notorious that the Duke soon wearies of those about him, and that your best chance of regaining his favour is to keep out of his reach and let your enemies hang themselves in the noose they have prepared for you.  For my part, I am always glad to do an ill-turn to that snivelling friar, my nephew, and the more so when I can seriously oblige a friend; and, as you have perhaps guessed, the Duke dares not ask for your return while I show a fancy for your company.  But this,” added he with an ironical twinkle, “is a tame place for a young man of your missionary temper, and I have a mind to send you on a visit to that arch-tyrant Ferdinand of Naples, in whose dominions a man may yet burn for heresy or be drawn and quartered for poaching on a nobleman’s preserves.  I am advised that some rare treasures have lately been taken from the excavations there and I should be glad if you would oblige me by acquiring a few for my gallery.  I will give you letters to a cognoscente of my acquaintance, who will put his experience at the disposal of your excellent taste, and the funds at your service will, I hope, enable you to outbid the English brigands who, as the Romans say, would carry off the Colosseum if it were portable.”

In all this Odo discerned Maria Clementina’s hand, and an instinctive resistance made him hang back upon his patron’s proposal.  But the only alternative was to return to Pianura; and every letter from Gamba urged on him (for the very reasons the Duke had given) the duty of keeping out of reach as the surest means of saving himself and the cause to which he was pledged.  Nothing remained but a graceful acquiescence; and early the next spring he started for Naples.

His first impulse had been to send Cantapresto back to the Duchess.  He knew that he owed his escape me grave difficulties to the soprano’s prompt action on the night of Heiligenstern’s arrest; but he was equally sure that such action might not always be as favourable to his plans.  It was plain that Cantapresto was paid to spy on him, and that whenever Odo’s intentions clashed with those of his would-be protectors the soprano would side with the latter.  But there was something in the air of Monte Alloro which dispelled such considerations, or at least weakened the impulse to act on them.  Cantapresto as usual had attracted notice at court.  His glibness and versatility amused the Duke, and to Odo he was as difficult to put off as a bad habit.  He had become so accomplished a servant that he seemed a sixth sense of his master’s; and when the latter prepared to start on his travels Cantapresto took his usual seat in the chaise.

To a traveller of Odo’s temper there could be few more agreeable journeys than the one on which he was setting out, and the Duke being in no haste to have his commission executed, his messenger had full leisure to enjoy every stage of the way.  He profited by this to visit several of the small principalities north of the Apennines before turning toward Genoa, whence he was to take ship for the South.  When he left Monte Alloro the land had worn the bleached face of February, and it was amazing to his northern-bred eyes to find himself, on the sea-coast, in the full exuberance of summer.  Seated by this halcyon shore, Genoa, in its carved and frescoed splendour, just then celebrating with the customary gorgeous ritual the accession of a new Doge, seemed to Odo like the richly-inlaid frame of some Renaissance “triumph.”  But the splendid houses with their marble peristyles, and the painted villas in their orange-groves along the shore, housed a dull and narrow-minded society, content to amass wealth and play biribi under the eyes of their ancestral Vandykes, without any concern as to the questions agitating the world.  A kind of fat commercial dulness, a lack of that personal distinction which justifies magnificence, seemed to Odo the prevailing note of the place; nor was he sorry when his packet set sail for Naples.

Here indeed he found all the vivacity that Genoa lacked.  Few cities could at first acquaintance be more engaging to the stranger.  Dull and brown as it appeared after the rich tints of Genoa, yet so gloriously did sea and land embrace it, so lavishly the sun gild and the moon silver it, that it seemed steeped in the surrounding hues of nature.  And what a nature to eyes subdued to the sober tints of the north!  Its spectacular quality—­that studied sequence of effects ranging from the translucent outline of Capri and the fantastically blue mountains of the coast, to Vesuvius lifting its torch above the plain—­this prodigal response to fancy’s claims suggested the boundless invention of some great scenic artist, some Olympian Veronese with sea and sky for a palette.  And then the city itself, huddled between bay and mountains, and seething and bubbling like a Titan’s cauldron!  Here was life at its source, not checked, directed, utilised, but gushing forth uncontrollably through every fissure of the brown walls and reeking streets—­love and hatred, mirth and folly, impudence and greed, going naked and unashamed as the lazzaroni on the quays.  The variegated surface of it all was fascinating to Odo.  It set free his powers of purely physical enjoyment, keeping all deeper sensations in abeyance.  These, however, presently found satisfaction in that other hidden beauty of which city and plain were but the sumptuous drapery.  It is hardly too much to say that to the trained eyes of the day the visible Naples hardly existed, so absorbed were they in the perusal of her buried past.  The fever of excavation was on every one.  No social or political problem could find a hearing while the subject of the last coin or bas-relief from Pompeii or Herculanaeum remained undecided.  Odo, at first an amused spectator, gradually found himself engrossed in the fierce quarrels raging over the date of an intaglio or the myth represented on an amphora.  The intrinsic beauty of the objects, and the light they shed on one of the most brilliant phases of human history, were in fact sufficient to justify the prevailing ardour; and the reconstructive habit he had acquired from Crescenti lent a living interest to the driest discussion between rival collectors.

Gradually other influences reasserted themselves.  At the house of Sir William Hamilton, then the centre of the most polished society in Naples, he met not only artists and archeologists, but men of letters and of affairs.  Among these, he was peculiarly drawn to the two distinguished economists, the abate Galiani and the cavaliere Filangieri, in whose company he enjoyed for the first time sound learning unhampered by pedantry.  The lively Galiani proved that social tastes and a broad wit are not incompatible with more serious interests; and Filangieri threw the charm of a graceful personality over any topic he discussed.  In the latter, indeed, courtly, young and romantic, a thinker whose intellectual acuteness was steeped in moral emotion, Odo beheld the type of the new chivalry, an ideal leader of the campaign against social injustice.  Filangieri represented the extremest optimism of the day.  His sense of existing abuses was only equalled by his faith in their speedy amendment.  Love was to cure all evils:  the love of man for man, the effusive all-embracing sympathy of the school of the Vicaire Savoyard, was to purge the emotions by tenderness and pity.  In Gamba, the victim of the conditions he denounced, the sense of present hardship prevailed over the faith in future improvement; while Filangieri’s social superiority mitigated his view of the evils and magnified the efficacy of the proposed remedies.  Odo’s days passed agreeably in such intercourse, or in the excitement of excursions to the ruined cities; and as the court and the higher society of Naples offered little to engage him, he gradually restricted himself to the small circle of chosen spirits gathered at the villa Hamilton.  To these he fancied the abate de Crucis might prove an interesting addition; and the desire to learn something of this problematic person induced him to quit the villa at the moment when the abate took leave.

They found themselves together on the threshold; and Odo, recalling to the other the circumstances of their first meeting, proposed that they should dismiss their carriages and regain the city on foot.  De Crucis readily consented; and they were soon descending the hill of Posilipo.  Here and there a turn in the road brought them to an open space whence they commanded the bay from Procida to Sorrento, with Capri afloat in liquid gold and the long blue shadow of Vesuvius stretching like a menace toward the city.  The spectacle was one of which Odo never wearied; but today it barely diverted him from the charms of his companion’s talk.  The abate de Crucis had that quality of repressed enthusiasm, of an intellectual sensibility tempered by self-possession, which exercises the strongest attraction over a mind not yet master of itself.  Though all he said had a personal note he seemed to withhold himself even in the moment of greatest expansion:  like some prince who should enrich his favourites from the public treasury but keep his private fortune unimpaired.  In the course of their conversation Odo learned that though of Austrian birth his companion was of mingled English and Florentine parentage:  a fact perhaps explaining the mixture of urbanity and reserve that lent such charm to his manner.  He told Odo that his connection with the Holy Office had been only temporary, and that, having contracted a severe cold the previous winter in Germany, he had accepted a secretaryship in the service of the Papal Nuncio in order to enjoy the benefits of a mild climate.  “By profession,” he added, “I am a pedagogue, and shall soon travel to Rome, where I have been called by Prince Bracciano to act as governor to his son; and meanwhile I am taking advantage of my residence here to indulge my taste for antiquarian studies.”

He went on to praise the company they had just left, declaring that he knew no better way for a young man to form his mind than by frequenting the society of men of conflicting views and equal capacity.  “Nothing,” said he, “is more injurious to the growth of character than to be secluded from argument and opposition; as nothing is healthier than to be obliged to find good reasons for one’s beliefs on pain of surrendering them.”

“But,” said Odo, struck with this declaration, “to a man of your cloth there is one belief which never surrenders to reason.”

The other smiled.  “True,” he agreed; “but I often marvel to see how little our opponents know of that belief.  The wisest of them seem in the case of those children at our country fairs who gape at the incredible things depicted on the curtains of the booths, without asking themselves whether the reality matches its presentment.  The weakness of human nature has compelled us to paint the outer curtain of the sanctuary in gaudy colours, and the malicious fancy of our enemies has given a monstrous outline to these pictures; but what are such vanities to one who has passed beyond, and beheld the beauty of the King’s daughter, all glorious within?”

As though unwilling to linger on such grave topics, he turned the talk to the scene at their feet, questioning Odo as to the impression Naples had made on him.  He listened courteously to the young man’s comments on the wretched state of the peasantry, the extravagances of the court and nobility and the judicial corruption which made the lower classes submit to any injustice rather than seek redress through the courts.  De Crucis agreed with him in the main, admitting that the monopoly of corn, the maintenance of feudal rights and the King’s indifference to the graver duties of his rank placed the kingdom of Naples far below such states as Tuscany or Venetia; “though,” he added, “I think our economists, in praising one state at the expense of another, too often overlook those differences of character and climate that must ever make it impossible to govern different races in the same manner.  Our peasants have a blunt saying:  Cut off the dog’s tail and he is still a dog; and so I suspect the most enlightened rule would hardly bring this prompt and choleric people, living on a volcanic soil amid a teeming vegetation, into any resemblance with the clear-headed Tuscan or the gentle and dignified Roman.”

As he spoke they emerged upon the Chiaia, where at that hour the quality took the air in their carriages, while the lower classes thronged the footway.  A more vivacious scene no city of Europe could present.  The gilt coaches drawn by six or eight of the lively Neapolitan horses, decked with plumes and artificial flowers and preceded by running footmen who beat the foot-passengers aside with long staves; the richly-dressed ladies seated in this never-ending file of carriages, bejewelled like miraculous images and languidly bowing to their friends; the throngs of citizens and their wives in holiday dress; the sellers of sherbet, ices and pastry bearing their trays and barrels through the crowd with strange cries and the jingling of bells; the friars of every order in their various habits, the street-musicians, the half-naked lazzaroni, cripples and beggars, who fringed the throng like the line of scum edging a fair lake;—­this medley of sound and colour, which in fact resembled some sudden growth of the fiery soil, was an expressive comment on the abate’s words.

“Look,” he continued, as he and Odo drew aside to escape the mud from an emblazoned chariot, “at the gold-leaf on the panels of that coach and the gold-lace on the liveries of those lacqueys.  Is there any other city in the world where gold is so prodigally used?  Where the monks gild their relics, the nobility their servants, the apothecaries their pills, the very butchers their mutton?  One might fancy their bright sun had set them the example!  And how cold and grey all soberer tints must seem to these children of Apollo!  Well—­so it is with their religion and their daily life.  I wager half those naked wretches yonder would rather attend a fine religious service, with abundance of gilt candles, music from gilt organ-pipes, and incense from gilt censers, than eat a good meal or sleep in a decent bed; as they would rather starve under a handsome merry King that has the name of being the best billiard-player in Europe than go full under one of your solemn reforming Austrian Archdukes!”

The words recalled to Odo Crescenti’s theory of the influence of character and climate on the course of history; and this subject soon engrossing both speakers, they wandered on, inattentive to their surroundings, till they found themselves in the thickest concourse of the Toledo.  Here for a moment the dense crowd hemmed them in; and as they stood observing the humours of the scene, Odo’s eye fell on the thick-set figure of a man in doctor’s dress, who was being led through the press by two agents of the Inquisition.  The sight was too common to have fixed his attention, had he not recognised with a start the irascible red-faced professor who, on his first visit to Vivaldi, had defended the Diluvial theory of creation.  The sight raised a host of memories from which Odo would gladly have beaten a retreat; but the crowd held him in check and a moment later he saw that the doctor’s eyes were fixed on him with an air of recognition.  A movement of pity succeeded his first impulse, and turning to de Crucis he exclaimed:—­“I see yonder an old acquaintance who seems in an unlucky plight and with whom I should be glad to speak.”

The other, following his glance, beckoned to one of the sbirri, who made his way through the throng with the alacrity of one summoned by a superior.  De Crucis exchanged a few words with him, and then signed to him to return to his charge, who presently vanished in some fresh shifting of the crowd.

“Your friend,” said de Crucis, “has been summoned before the Holy Office to answer a charge of heresy preferred by the authorities.  He has lately been appointed to the chair of physical sciences in the University here, and has doubtless allowed himself to publish openly views that were better expounded in the closet.  His offence, however, appears to be a mild one, and I make no doubt he will be set free in a few days.”

This, however, did not satisfy Odo; and he asked de Crucis if there were no way of speaking with the doctor at once.

His companion hesitated.  “It can easily be arranged,” said he; “but—­pardon me, cavaliere—­are you well-advised in mixing yourself in such matters?”

“I am well-advised in seeking to serve a friend!” Odo somewhat hotly returned; and de Crucis, with a faint smile of approval, replied quietly:  “In that case I will obtain permission for you to visit your friend in the morning.”

He was true to his word; and the next forenoon Odo, accompanied by an officer of police, was taken to the prison of the Inquisition.  Here he found his old acquaintance seated in a clean commodious room and reading Aristotle’s “History of Animals,” the only volume of his library that he had been permitted to carry with him.  He welcomed Odo heartily, and on the latter’s enquiring what had brought him to this plight, replied with some dignity that he had been led there in the fulfilment of his duty.

“Some months ago,” he continued, “I was summoned hither to profess the natural sciences in the University; a summons I readily accepted, since I hoped, by the study of a volcanic soil, to enlarge my knowledge of the globe’s formation.  Such in fact was the case, but to my surprise my researches led me to adopt the views I had formerly combated, and I now find myself in the ranks of the Vulcanists, or believers in the secondary origin of the earth:  a view you may remember I once opposed with all the zeal of inexperience.  Having firmly established every point in my argument according to the Baconian method of investigation, I felt it my duty to enlighten my scholars; and in the course of my last lecture I announced the result of my investigations.  I was of course aware of the inevitable result; but the servants of Truth have no choice but to follow where she calls, and many have joyfully traversed stonier places than I am likely to travel.”

Nothing could exceed the respect with which Odo heard this simple confession of faith.  It was as though the speaker had unconsciously convicted him of remissness, of cowardice even; so vain and windy his theorising seemed, judged by the other’s deliberate act!  Yet placed as he was, what could he do, how advance their common end, but by passively waiting on events?  At least, he reflected, he could perform the trivial service of trying to better his friend’s case; and this he eagerly offered to attempt.  The doctor thanked him, but without any great appearance of emotion:  Odo was struck by the change which had transformed a heady and intemperate speaker into a model of philosophic calm.  The doctor, indeed, seemed far more concerned for the safety of his library and his cabinet of minerals than for his own.  “Happily,” said he, “I am not a man of family, and can therefore sacrifice my liberty with a clear conscience:  a fact I am the more thankful for when I recall the moral distress of our poor friend Vivaldi, when compelled to desert his post rather than be separated from his daughter.”

The name brought the colour to Odo’s brow, and with an embarrassed air he asked what news the doctor had of their friend.

“Alas,” said the other, “the last was of his death, which happened two years since in Pavia.  The Sardinian government had, as you probably know, confiscated his small property on his leaving the state, and I am told he died in great poverty, and in sore anxiety for his daughter’s future.”  He added that these events had taken place before his own departure from Turin, and that since then he had learned nothing of Fulvia’s fate, save that she was said to have made her home with an aunt who lived in a town of the Veneto.

Odo listened in silence.  The lapse of time, and the absence of any links of association, had dimmed the girl’s image in his breast; but at the mere sound of her name it lived again, and he felt her interwoven with his deepest fibres.  The picture of her father’s death and of her own need filled him with an ineffectual pity, and for a moment he thought of seeking her out; but the other could recall neither the name of the town she had removed to nor that of the relative who had given her a home.

To aid the good doctor was a simpler business.  The intervention of de Crucis and Odo’s own influence sufficed to effect his release, and on the payment of a heavy fine (in which Odo privately assisted him) he was reinstated in his chair.  The only promise exacted by the Holy Office was that he should in future avoid propounding his own views on questions already decided by Scripture, and to this he readily agreed, since, as he shrewdly remarked to Odo, his opinions were now well-known, and any who wished farther instruction had only to apply to him privately.

The old Duke having invited Odo to return to Monte Alloro with such treasures as he had collected for the ducal galleries, the young man resolved to visit Rome on his way to the North.  His acquaintance with de Crucis had grown into something like friendship since their joint effort in behalf of the imprisoned sage, and the abate preparing to set out about the same time, the two agreed to travel together.  The road leading from Naples to Rome was at that time one of the worst in Italy, and was besides so ill-provided with inns that there was no inducement to linger on the way.  De Crucis, however, succeeded in enlivening even this tedious journey.  He was a good linguist and a sound classical scholar, besides having, as he had told Odo, a pronounced taste for antiquarian research.  In addition to this, he performed agreeably on the violin, and was well-acquainted with the history of music.  His chief distinction, however, lay in the ease with which he wore his accomplishments, and in a breadth of view that made it possible to discuss with him many subjects distasteful to most men of his cloth.  The sceptical or licentious ecclesiastic was common enough; but Odo had never before met a priest who united serious piety with this indulgent temper, or who had learning enough to do justice to the arguments of his opponents.

On his venturing one evening to compliment de Crucis on these qualities, the latter replied with a smile:  “Whatever has been lately advanced against the Jesuits, it can hardly be denied that they were good school-masters; and it is to them I owe the talents you have been pleased to admire.  Indeed,” he continued, quietly fingering his violin, “I was myself bred in the order:  a fact I do not often make known in the present heated state of public opinion, but which I never conceal when commended for any quality that I owe to the Society rather than to my own merit.”

Surprise for the moment silenced Odo; for though it was known that Italy was full of former Jesuits who had been permitted to remain in the country as secular priests, and even to act as tutors or professors in private families, he had never thought of de Crucis in this connection.  The latter, seeing his surprise, went on:  “Once a Jesuit, always a Jesuit, I suppose.  I at least owe the Society too much not to own my debt when the occasion offers.  Nor could I ever see the force of the charge so often brought against us:  that we sacrifice everything to the glory of the order.  For what is the glory of the order?  Our own motto has declared it:  Ad majorem Dei gloriam—­who works for the Society works for its Master.  If our zeal has been sometimes misdirected, our blood has a thousand times witnessed to its sincerity.  In the Indies, in America, in England during the great persecution, and lately on our own unnatural coasts, the Jesuits have died for Christ as joyfully as His first disciples died for Him.  Yet these are but a small number in comparison with the countless servants of the order who, labouring in far countries among savage peoples, or surrounded by the heretical enemies of our faith, have died the far bitterer death of moral isolation:  setting themselves to their task with the knowledge that their lives were but so much indistinguishable dust to be added to the sum of human effort.  What association founded on human interests has ever commanded such devotion?  And what merely human authority could count on such unquestioning obedience, not in a mob of poor illiterate monks, but in men chosen for their capacity and trained to the exercise of their highest faculties?  Yet there have never lacked such men to serve the Order; and as one of our enemies has said—­our noblest enemy, the great Pascal—­’je crois volontiers aux histoires dont les temoins se font egorger.’”

He did not again revert to his connection with the Jesuits; but in the farther course of their acquaintance Odo was often struck by the firmness with which he testified to the faith that was in him, without using the jargon of piety, or seeming, by his own attitude, to cast a reflection on that of others.  He was indeed master of that worldly science which the Jesuits excelled in imparting, and which, though it might sink to hypocrisy in smaller natures, became in a finely-tempered spirit, the very flower of Christian courtesy.

Odo had often spoken to de Crucis of the luxurious lives led by many of the monastic orders in Naples.  It might be true enough that the monks themselves, and even their abbots, fared on fish and vegetables, and gave their time to charitable and educational work; but it was impossible to visit the famous monastery of San Martino, or that of the Carthusians at Camaldoli, without observing that the anchoret’s cell had expanded into a delightful apartment, with bedchamber, library and private chapel, and his cabbage-plot into a princely garden.  De Crucis admitted the truth of the charge, explaining it in part by the character of the Neapolitan people, and by the tendency of the northern traveller to forget that such apparent luxuries as spacious rooms, shady groves and the like are regarded as necessities in a hot climate.  He urged, moreover, that the monastic life should not be judged by a few isolated instances; and on the way to Rome he proposed that Odo, by way of seeing the other side of the question, should visit the ancient foundation of the Benedictines on Monte Cassino.

The venerable monastery, raised on its height over the busy vale of Garigliano, like some contemplative spirit above the conflicting problems of life, might well be held to represent the nobler side of Christian celibacy.  For nearly a thousand years its fortified walls had been the stronghold of the humanities, and generations of students had cherished and added to the treasures of the famous library.  But the Benedictine rule was as famous for good works as for learning, and its comparative abstention from dogmatic controversy and from the mechanical devotion of some of the other orders had drawn to it men of superior mind, who sought in the monastic life the free exercise of the noblest activities rather than a sanctified refuge from action.  This was especially true of the monastery of Monte Cassino, whither many scholars had been attracted and where the fathers had long had the highest name for learning and beneficence.  The monastery, moreover, in addition to its charitable and educational work among the poor, maintained a school of theology to which students came from all parts of Italy; and their presence lent an unwonted life to the great labyrinth of courts and cloisters.

The abbot, with whom de Crucis was well-acquainted, welcomed the travellers warmly, making them free of the library and the archives and pressing them to prolong their visit.  Under the spell of these influences they lingered on from day to day; and to Odo they were the pleasantest days he had known.  To be waked before dawn by the bell ringing for lauds—­to rise from the narrow bed in his white-washed cell, and opening his casement look forth over the haze-enveloped valley, the dark hills of the Abruzzi and the remote gleam of sea touched into being by the sunrise—­to hasten through hushed echoing corridors to the church, where in a grey resurrection-light the fathers were intoning the solemn office of renewal—­this morning ablution of the spirit, so like the bodily plunge into clear cold water, seemed to attune the mind to the fullest enjoyment of what was to follow:  the hours of study, the talks with the monks, the strolls through cloister or garden, all punctuated by the recurring summons to devotion.  Yet for all its latent significance it remained to him a purely sensuous impression, the vision of a golden leisure:  not a solution of life’s perplexities, but at best an honourable escape from them.