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.