wet gusts and the scent of beaten blossoms; but south of the Alps the
new ideas travelled slowly, and the Piedmontese were as yet scarce aware
of the man who had written thus of their own mountains. It was true
that, some thirty years earlier, in one of the very monasteries on which
Odo now looked down, a Swiss vagrant called Rousseau had embraced the
true faith with the most moving signs of edification; but the rescue of
Helvetian heretics was a favourite occupation of the Turinese nobility
and it is doubtful if any recalled the name of the strange proselyte who
had hastened to signalise his conversion by robbing his employers and
slandering an innocent maid-servant. Odo in fact owed his first
acquaintance with the French writers to Alfieri, who, in the intervals
of his wandering over Europe, now and then reappeared in Turin laden
with the latest novelties in Transalpine literature and haberdashery.
What his eccentric friend failed to provide, Odo had little difficulty
in obtaining for himself; for though most of the new writers were on the
Index, and the Sardinian censorship was notoriously severe, there was
never yet a barrier that could keep out books, and Cantapresto was a
skilled purveyor of contraband dainties. Odo had thus acquainted himself
with the lighter literature of England and France; and though he had
read but few philosophical treatises, was yet dimly aware of the new
standpoint from which, north of the Alps, men were beginning to test the
accepted forms of thought. The first disturbance of his childish faith,
and the coincident reading of the Lettres Philosophiques, had been
followed by a period of moral perturbation, during which he suffered
from that sense of bewilderment, of inability to classify the phenomena
of life, that is one of the keenest trials of inexperience. Youth and
nature had their way with him, however, and a wholesome reaction of
indifference set in. The invisible world of thought and conduct had been
the frequent subject of his musings; but the other, tangible world was
close to him too, spreading like a rich populous plain between himself