panelling and narrow mirrors of the apartment, with its windows looking
on a garden set with mossy statues. To Odo, however, the scene suggested
the most tedious part of his day's routine. The compliments to be
exchanged, the silly verses to be praised, the gewgaws from Paris to be
admired, were all contrasted in his mind with the vision of that other
life which had come to him on the hillside of the Superga. On this mood
the Countess Clarice's sarcasms fell without effect. To be pouted at
because he had failed to attend the promenade of the Valentino was to
Odo but a convenient pretext for excusing himself from the Queen's
circle that evening. He had engaged with little ardour to join Alfieri
in what he guessed to be a sufficiently commonplace adventure; but as he
listened to the Countess's chatter about the last minuet-step, and the
relative merits of sanspareil water and oil-of-lilies, of gloves from
Blois and Vendome, his impatience hailed any alternative as a release.
Meanwhile, however, long hours of servitude intervened. The lady's
toilet completed, to the adjusting of the last patch, he must attend her
to dinner, where, placed at her side, he was awarded the honour of
carving the roast; must sit through two hours of biribi in company with
the abatino, the doctor, and half-a-dozen parasites of the noble table;
and for two hours more must ride in her gilt coach up and down the
promenade of the Valentino.

Escaping from this ceremonial, with the consciousness that it must be
repeated on the morrow, Odo was seized with that longing for freedom
that makes the first street-corner an invitation to flight. How he
envied Alfieri, whose travelling-carriage stood at the beck of such
moods! Odo's scant means forbade evasion, even had his military duties
not kept him in Turin. He felt himself no more than a puppet dancing to
the tune of Parini's satire, a puny doll condemned, as the strings of
custom pulled, to feign the gestures of immortal passions.