lost, adversaries run through and tradesmen ruined with that
imperturbable grace which distinguished the man of quality from the
plebeian.

Among the privileges of the foreign pupils were frequent visits to the
royal theatre; and here was to Odo a source of unimagined joys. His
superstitious dread of the stage (a sentiment, he soon discovered, that
not even his mother's director shared) made his heart beat oppressively
as he first set foot in the theatre. It was a gala night, boxes and
stalls were thronged, and the audience-hall unfolded its glittering
curves like some poisonous flower enveloping him in rich malignant
fragrance. This impression was dispelled by the rising of the curtain on
a scene of such Claude-like loveliness as it would have been impossible
to associate with the bug-bear tales of Donnaz or with the coarse antics
of the comedians at Chivasso. A temple girt with mysterious shade,
lifting its colonnade above a sunlit harbour; and before the temple,
vine-wreathed nymphs waving their thyrsi through the turns of a
melodious dance--such was the vision that caught up Odo and swept him
leagues away from the rouged and starred assemblage gathered in the
boxes to gossip, flirt, eat ices and chocolates, and incidentally, in
the pauses of their talk, to listen for a moment to the ravishing airs
of Metastasio's Achilles in Scyros.

The distance between such performances--magic evocations of light and
colour and melody--and the gross buffoonery of the popular stage, still
tainted with the obscenities of the old commedia dell' arte, in a
measure explains the different points from which at that period the
stage was viewed in Italy: a period when in such cities as Milan,
Venice, Turin, actors and singers were praised to the skies and loaded
with wealth and favours, while the tatterdemalion players who set up