Alfieri's coming set deeper springs in motion. His follies and
extravagances were on a less provincial scale than those of Odo's daily
associates. The breath of a freer life clung to him and his allusions
were so many glimpses into a larger world. His political theories were
but the enlargement of his private grievances, but the mere play of
criticism on accepted institutions was an exercise more novel and
exhilirating than the wildest ride on one of his half-tamed
thorough-breds. Still chiefly a man of pleasure, and the slave, as
always, of some rash infatuation, Alfieri was already shaking off the
intellectual torpor of his youth; and the first stirrings of his
curiosity roused an answering passion in Odo. Their tastes were indeed
divergent, for to that external beauty which was to Odo the very bloom
of life, Alfieri remained insensible; while of its imaginative
counterpart, its prolongation in the realm of thought and emotion, he
had but the most limited conception. But his love of ringing deeds woke
the chivalrous strain in Odo, and his vague celebration of Liberty, that
unknown goddess to whom altars were everywhere building, chimed with the
other's scorn of oppression and injustice. So far, it is true, their
companionship had been mainly one of pleasure; but the temper of both
gave their follies that provisional character which saves them from
vulgarity.

Odo, who had slept late on the morning after his friend's return, was
waked by the pompous mouthing of certain lines just then on every lip in
Italy:--

Meet was it that, its ancient seats forsaking,
An Empire should set forth with dauntless sail,
And braving tempests and the deep's betrayal,