THE PIETISTIC THRALL


That evening my mother talked to me at longer length than I remember her
ever to have done before.

It may be that she feared lest Gino Falcone should have aroused in me
notions which it was best to lull back at once into slumber. It may be
that she, too, had felt something of the crucial quality of that moment in
the armoury, just as she must have perceived my first hesitation to obey
her slightest word, whence came her resolve to check this mutiny ere it
should spread and become too big for her.

We sat in the room that was called her private dining­room, but which, in
fact, was all things to her save the chamber in which she slept.

The fine apartments through which I had strayed as a little lad in my
father's day, the handsome lofty chambers, with their frescoed ceilings,
their walls hung with costly tapestries, many of which had come from the
looms of Flanders, their floors of wood mosaics, and their great carved
movables, had been shut up these many years.

For my mother's claustral needs sufficient was provided by the alcove in
which she slept, the private chapel of the citadel in which she would spend
long hours, and this private dining-room where we now sat. Into the
spacious gardens of the castle she would seldom wander, into our town of
Mondolfo never. Not since my father's departure upon his ill-starred
rebellion had she set foot across the drawbridge.