“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.