Odo’s own mind, across which the events and emotions of the day still threw the fantastic shadows of an expiring illumination, was wrought to the highest state of impressionability. He saw in a flash all that the picture must have symbolised to his cousin’s fancy; and in his desire to reconstruct that dying vision of fleshly retribution, he stepped close to the diptych, resting a knee on the stool beneath it. As he did so, the picture suddenly opened, disclosing the inner panel. Odo caught up one of the flambeaux, and in its light, as on a sunlit wave, there stepped forth to him the lost Venus of Giorgione.
He knew the picture in an instant. There was no mistaking the glow of the limbs, the midsummer languor of the smile, the magical atmosphere in which the gold of sunlight, of autumn leaves, of amber grapes, seemed fused by some lost alchemy of the brush. As he gazed, the scene changed, and he saw himself in a darkened room with cabalistic hangings. He saw Heiligenstern’s tall figure, towering in supernatural light, the Duke leaning eagerly forward, the Duchess with set lips and troubled eyes, the little prince bent wonderingly above the magic crystal…
A step in the antechamber announced Trescorre’s approach. Odo returned to the cabinet and the minister advanced with a low bow. The two men had had time to grow accustomed to the new relation in which they stood to one another, yet there were moments when, to Odo, the past seemed to lie like fallen leaves beneath Trescorre’s steps—Donna Laura, fond and foolish in her weeds, Gamba, Momola, and the pure featherhead Cerveno, dying at nineteen of a distemper because he had stood in the other’s way. The impression was strong on him now —but it was only momentary.
Habit reasserted itself, and the minister effaced the man. Odo signed to Trescorre to seat himself and the latter silently presented his report.
He was a diligent and capable administrator, and however mixed might be the motives which attached him to his sovereign, they did not interfere with the exact performance of his duties. Odo knew this and was grateful for it. He knew that Trescorre, ambitious of the regency, had intrigued against him to the last. He knew that an intemperate love of power was the mainspring of that seemingly dispassionate nature. But death had crossed Trescorre’s schemes; and he was too adroit an opportunist not to see that his best chance now lay in making himself indispensable to his new sovereign. Of all this Odo was aware; but his own motives in appointing Trescorre did not justify his looking for great disinterestedness in his minister. The irony of circumstances had forced them upon each other, and each knew that the other understood the situation and was prepared to make the best of it.
The Duke presently rose, and handed back to Trescorre the reports of the secret police. They were the documents he most disliked to handle.
“You have acquitted yourself admirably of your disagreeable duties,” he said with a smile. “I hope I have done as well. At any rate the day is over.”
Trescorre returned the smile, with his usual tinge of irony. “Another has already begun,” said he.
“Ah,” said Odo, with a touch of impatience, “are we not to sleep on our laurels?”
Trescorre bowed. “Austria, your Highness, never sleeps.”
Odo looked at him with surprise. “What do you mean?”
“That I have to remind your Highness—”
“Of what—?”
Trescorre had one of his characteristic pauses.
“That the Duke of Monte Alloro is in failing health—and that her Highness’s year of widowhood ended yesterday.”
There was a silence. Odo, who had reseated himself, rose and walked to the window. The shutters stood open and he looked out over the formless obscurity of the gardens. Above the intervening masses of foliage the Borromini wing raised its vague grey bulk. He saw lights in Maria Clementina’s apartments and wondered if she still waked. An hour or two earlier she had given him her hand in the contradance at the state ball. It was her first public appearance since the late Duke’s death, and with the laying off of her weeds she had regained something of her former brilliancy. At the moment he had hardly observed her: she had seemed a mere inanimate part of the pageant of which he formed the throbbing centre. But now the sense of her nearness pressed upon him.
She seemed close to him, ingrown with his fate; and with the curious duality of vision that belongs to such moments he beheld her again as she had first shone on him—the imperious child whom he had angered by stroking her spaniel, the radiant girl who had welcomed him on his return to Pianura. Trescorre’s voice aroused him.
“At any moment,” the minister was saying, “her Highness may fall heir to Monte Alloro. It is the moment for which Austria waits. There is always an Archduke ready—and her Highness is still a young woman.”
Odo turned slowly from the window. “I have told you that this is impossible,” he murmured.
Trescorre looked down and thoughtfully fingered the documents in his hands.
“Your Highness,” said he, “is as well-acquainted as your ministers with the difficulties that beset us. Monte Alloro is one of the richest states in Italy. It is a pity to alienate such revenues from Pianura.”
The new Duke was silent. His minister’s words were merely the audible expression of his own thoughts. He knew that the future welfare of Pianura depended on the annexation of Monte Alloro. He owed it to his people to unite the two sovereignties.
At length he said: “You are building on an unwarrantable assumption.”
Trescorre raised an interrogative glance.
“You assume her Highness’s consent.”
The minister again paused; and his pause seemed to flash an ironical light on the poverty of the other’s defences.
“I come straight from her Highness,” said he quietly, “and I assume nothing that I am not in a position to affirm.”
Odo turned on him with a start. “Do I understand that you have presumed—?”
His minister raised a deprecating hand. “Sir,” said he, “the Archduke’s envoy is in Pianura.”
