The Marquess of Cerveno had succumbed to the tertian ague contracted at
the hunting-lodge of Pontesordo; and this unforeseen calamity left but
one life, that of the sickly ducal infant, between Odo and the
succession to the throne of Pianura. Such was the news conveyed
post-haste from Turin by Donna Laura; who added the Duke's express wish
that his young kinsman should be fitted for the secular career, and the
information that Count Valdu had already entered his stepson's name at
the Royal Academy of Turin.

The Duke of Pianura being young and in good health, and his wife having
already given him an heir, the most sanguine imagination could hardly
view Odo as being brought much nearer the succession; yet the change in
his condition was striking enough to excuse the fancy of those about him
for shaping the future to their liking. The priestling was to turn
courtier and perhaps soldier; Asti was to be exchanged for Turin, the
seminary for the academy; and even the old chief of Donnaz betrayed in
his grumbling counsels to the boy a sense of the exalted future in which
they might some day serve him.

The preparations of departure and the wonder of his new state left Odo
little space wherein to store his thought with impressions of what he
was leaving; and it was only in after years, when the accretion of
superficial incident had dropped from his past, that those last days at
Donnaz gained their full distinctness. He saw them then, heavy with the
warmth of the long summer, from the topmost pine-belt to the bronzed
vineyards turning their metallic clusters to the sun; and in the midst
his small bewildered figure, netted in a web of association, and
seeming, as he broke away, to leave a shred of himself in every corner
of the castle.