The Valley Of Decision

the travellers set forward next

ers, travelling in aroofed-in waggon, with the younger children of the company runningalongside in threadbare tights and trunkhose decked with tinsel; orwhether they drove through a village market-place, where yellow earthencrocks and gaudy Indian cottons, brass pails and braziers and plattersof bluish pewter

servant. Meanwhile no one attended to hisquestions and the hours were beginning to seem long when, on the thirdday, they set out from Vercelli toward the hills. The cold increased asthey rose; and Odo, though he had often wished to see the mountains, wasyet dismayed at the gloomy and menacing aspect of the reg

a chapel standing apart on somegrassy eminence. When night fell the waters grew louder, a stinging windswept the woods, and the carriage, staggering from rut to rut, seemedevery moment about to land them in some invisible ravine. Fear and coldat la

s, a tall old man in anightcap and furred gown

ridor and into a gloomy apartment where three ladies shivered about atable set with candles. Bidden by the old gentleman to salute hisgrandmother and great-aunts, Odo bowed over three wrinkled hands, onefat and so

ale heavy-cheeked person with little watchful black eyes which shedropped at her husband's approach; while the two great-aunts, seatedside by side in high-backed chairs with their feet on braziers, remindedOdo of the narrow elongated saints squeezed into the niches of achurch-doo

ness. A supper ofvenison and goat's cheese was not designed to restore her spirits, andwhen at length she and Odo had withdrawn

extraordinarilynovel to his lowland eyes. The chamber commanded the wooded steep belowthe castle, with a stream looping its base; beyond, the pastures slopedpleasantly under walnut trees, with here and there a clearing ploughedfor the spring crops and a s

hicolations, itsportcullis still dropped at nightfall, and the loud stream forming anatural moat at its base. Through the desert spaces of this greatstructure Odo wandered at will, losing himself in its network of barechambers, some now put to domestic uses, with smoked meats hanging fromthe rafters, cheeses ranged on shelves and farmer's implements stackedon the floor; others abandoned to bats and spiders, with slit-likeopenings choked by a growth of wild che

was afoot all day attending to her household; forbesides the dairy and the bakehouse and the stillroom where fruits werestewed and pastes prepared, there was the great spinning-room full ofdistaffs and looms, where the women spun and wove all the linen used inthe castle and the coarse stuffs worn by its inmates; with workshops forthe cobbler and tailor who clothed and

many silver candlesticks,it seemed to Odo, by reason of its bare walls, much less beautiful thanthat deserted orat

edifficult for a child to interpret; for here were naked laurel-crownedknights on prancing horses, nimble goat-faced creatures grouped inadoration round a smoking altar and youths piping to saffron-haireddamsels on grass-banks set with poplars. The very strangeness of thefable set forth perhaps engaged the child's fancy; or the benignantmildnes

rmfor service and often to be found sunning himself in the court with anold hound's chin on his knee. The old man, whose name was Bruno, toldh

dden all the young boys and wenchesabout the place to set foot there; and the Marchioness herself, I'mtold, doesn't enter without leave."This was the more puzzling to Odo that he had seen so many naked pagans,in colours and marble, at his cousin's palace of Pianura, where theywere praised as the chief ornament of that sumptuous fabric; but he keptBruno's warning in mind and so timed his visits that they escaped thechaplain's observation. Wheth

ate's that it vivified the theologicalabstractions over which Odo had formerly languished, infusing apassionate meaning into the formulas of the textbooks. His discoursebreathed the same spirit, and had his religion been warmed byimagination or tempered by charity the child had been a ductilesubstance in his hands; but the shadow of the Council of Trent stillhung over the Church in Savoy, making its approach almost as sombre andforbidding as that of the Calvinist heresy. As it was, the fascinationthat drew Odo to the

o found a hermitage like the Portiuncula among the savage rocksof Donnaz, and live there in gentle communion with plants and animals,alternated in him with the martial ambition to ride forth against theChurch's enemies, as his ancestors had ridden against the bloody andpestilent Waldenses; but whether his piety took the passive or theaggres

saint's halo rather than the bishop'smitre; and throwing himself on his knees before the old Marquess, whowas present, he besought that he might be allowed to join the Franciscanorder. The Marquess at this flew into so furious a rage, cursing themeddlesomeness of women and the chaplain's bigotry, that the ladiesburst into tears and Odo's swelling zeal turned small. There was i

iracles and the Lord knows what, and then talk of the simpleton'svocation. His vocation, nom de Dieu, is to be an abbot first, and then amonsign

ivileges, and Odo's grandfather,tenacious of these dwindling rights, was for ever engaged in vaincontests with his peasantry. To see these poor creatures cursed andbrow-beaten, their least offences punished, their few claims disputed,must have turned Odo's fear of his grandfather to hatred, had he notobserved that the old man gave with one hand what he took with theother, so that, in his dealings with his people, he resembled one ofthose torrents which

with tales of prowess that sometimes, as theyclimbed the stony defiles in the clear shadow before sunrise, he fanciedhimself riding forth to exterminate the Waldenses who, according to thechaplain, still lurked like basilisks and dragons in the recesses of themountains. Certain it is that his ride