Donna Laura, with a shrug, handed the letter to her husband; Count Valdu, adjusting his glasses, observed it was notorious that people living in the depths of the country thought themselves qualified to instruct their city relatives on all points connected with the social usages; and the cicisbeo suggested that he could recommend an abate who was proficient in the construction of the Martellian verse, and who would made no extra charge for that accomplishment.

“Charges!” the Countess cried.  “There’s a matter my father doesn’t deign to consider.  It’s not enough, nowadays, to give the lads a governor, but they must maintain their servants too, an idle gluttonous crew that prey on their pockets and get a commission off every tradesman’s bill.”

Count Valdu lifted a deprecating hand.

“My dear, nothing could be more offensive to his Majesty than any attempt to reduce the way of living of the pupils of the Academy.”

“Of course,” she shrugged—­ “But who’s to pay?  The Duke’s beggarly pittance hardly clothes him.”

The cicisbeo suggested that the cavaliere Odo had expectations; at which Donna Laura flushed and turned uneasy; while the Count, part of whose marital duty it was to intervene discreetly between his lady and her knight, now put forth the remark that the abate Cantapresto seemed a shrewd serviceable fellow.

“Nor do I like to turn him adrift,” cried the Countess instantly, “after he has obliged us by attending my son on his journey.”

“And I understand,” added the Count, “that he would be glad to serve the cavaliere in any capacity you might designate.”

“Why not in all?” said the cicisbeo thoughtfully.  “There would be undoubted advantages to the cavaliere in possessing a servant who would explain the globes while powdering his hair and not be above calling his chair when he attended him to a lecture.”

And the upshot of it was that when Odo, a few days later, entered on his first term at the Academy, he was accompanied by the abate Cantapresto, who had agreed, for a minimum of pay, to serve him faithfully in the double capacity of pedagogue and lacquey.

The considerable liberty accorded the foreign students made Odo’s first year at the Academy at once pleasanter and less profitable than had he been one of the regular pupils.  The companions among whom he found himself were a set of lively undisciplined young gentlemen, chiefly from England, Russia and the German principalities; all in possession of more or less pocket-money and attended by governors either pedantic and self-engrossed or vulgarly subservient.  These young sprigs, whose ambition it was to ape the dress and manners of the royal pages, led a life of dissipation barely interrupted by a few hours of attendance at the academic classes.  From the ill-effects of such surroundings Odo was preserved by an intellectual curiosity that flung him ravening on his studies.  It was not that he was of a bookish habit, or that