Though it was February the season was so soft that the orange and lemon trees had been put out in their earthen vases before the lemon-house, and the beds in the parterres were full of violets, daffodils and auriculas; but the scent of the orange-blossoms and the bright colours of the flowers moved Odo less than the noble ordonnance of the pleached alleys, each terminated by a statue or a marble seat; and when he came to the grotto where, amid rearing sea-horses and Tritons, a cascade poured from the grove above, his wonder passed into such delicious awe as hung him speechless on the hunchback’s hand.

“Eh,” said the latter with a sneer, “it’s a finer garden than we have at our family palace.  Do you know what’s planted there?” he asked, turning suddenly on the little boy.  “Dead bodies, cavaliere!  Rows and rows of them; the bodies of my brothers and sisters, the Innocents who die like flies every year of the cholera and the measles and the putrid fever.”  He saw the terror in Odo’s face and added in a gentler tone:  “Eh, don’t cry, cavaliere; they sleep better in those beds than in any others they’re like to lie on.  Come, come, and I’ll show your excellency the aviaries.”

From the aviaries they passed to the Chinese pavilion, where the Duke supped on summer evenings, and thence to the bowling-alley, the fish-stew and the fruit-garden.  At every step some fresh surprise arrested Odo; but the terrible vision of that other garden planted with the dead bodies of the Innocents robbed the spectacle of its brightness, dulled the plumage of the birds behind their gilt wires and cast a deeper shade over the beech-grove, where figures of goat-faced men lurked balefully in the twilight.  Odo was glad when they left the blackness of this grove for the open walks, where gardeners were working and he had the reassurance of the sky.  The hunchback, who seemed sorry that he had frightened him, told him many curious stories about the marble images that adorned the walks; and pausing suddenly before one of a naked man with a knife in his hand, cried out in a frenzy:  “This is my namesake, Brutus!” But when Odo would have asked if the naked man was a kinsman, the boy hurried him on, saying only:  “You’ll read of him some day in Plutarch.”

1.3.

Odo, next morning, under the hunchback’s guidance, continued his exploration of the palace.  His mother seemed glad to be rid of him, and Vanna packing him off early, with the warning that he was not to fall into the fishponds or get himself trampled by the horses, he guessed, with a thrill, that he had leave to visit the stables.  Here in fact the two boys were soon making their way among the crowd of grooms and strappers in the yard, seeing the Duke’s carriage-horses groomed, and the Duchess’s cream-coloured hackney saddled for her ride in the chase; and at length, after much lingering and gazing, going on to the harness-rooms and coach-house.  The state-carriages, with their carved and gilt wheels, their panels gay