The Valley of Decision

reined in his horse at a point where a group of Spanish chestnuts overhung the way. The air was light and pure, the s

sunshine, the great city in the bosom of the plain. The spectacle was fair enough to touch any fancy: brown domes and facades set in new-leaved gardens and surrounded by vineyards extending to the

Pennine valleys. It was a mere waft, perhaps, from some clod of loosened earth, or the touch of cool elastic moss as he flung himself face downward under the trees; but the savour, the contact filled his nostrils with mountain air and his eyes with dim-branched distances. At Donnaz the slow motions of the northern spring had endeared to him all those sweet incipiencies preceding the full choral burst of leaf and f

as for the vintage, transporting thither all the diversions of city life and venturing no farther afield than the pleasure-grounds that were but so many open-air card-rooms, concert-halls and theatres. Odo's tenderness for every sylvan function of renewal and decay, every shifting of light and colour on the flying surface of the year, would have been met with the same stare with which a certain enchanting Countess had received th

, my eyes were charmed by the sight of an open meadow...Nature seemed to revel in unwonted contrasts; such varieties of aspect had she united in one spot. Here was an eastern prospect bright with spring flowers, while autumn fruits ripened to the south and the northern face of the scene was still locked in wintry frosts...Add to this the different angles at which the peaks took the light, the chiarosc

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 t

the observance of certain fixed conventions: the correct stepping of a moral minuet; as an inner obligation, as a voluntary tribute to Diderot's "divinity on earth," it had hardly yet drawn breath. To depict a personal relation so much purer and more profound than any form of sentiment then in fashion, and then to subordinate it, unflinchingly, to the ideal of those larger relations that

of all that noise and glitter deepened the sweetness of the woodland hush. He sighed again. Suddenly voices sounded in the road below-a man's speech flecked with girlish laughter. Odo hung back listening: the girl's voice rang like a bird-call through his rustling fancies. Presently she came in sight: a slender black-mantled figure hung on the arm of an elderly man in the sober dress of one of the learned professions-a physician or a lawyer, Odo guessed

e wall across the road. The movement tilted back her hat, and Odo caught her small fine profile, w

raining on tiptoe, "

n," said he philosophically, "alw

ion?" sh

theft you'r

monk's orchard, no

then," he humor

rries they might at least," she argue

ipped a hand through her arm. "Come, child," said he, "does not the philosopher

y doesn't the loaf in the baker's wind

and drew her up th

s of the romance. What a breath of freshness they brought with them! The girl's cheek was clear as the cherry-blossoms, and with what lovely freedom did she move! Thus Julie might have led Saint Preux through her "Elysium." Odo crossed t

th a nine years' accretion of fat, l

the Countess

el

has battered the door

el

off with the message that yo

wh

no; but that wa

ed from t

air; or no-write a letter for

igh stone flights to that young gentleman's modest lodgings, and they stood together in a study lined with books and

valiere?" Cantapresto asked, obsequio

irst. Begin 'My

ose terms, cavaliere," his scrib

, then-wait. 'Th

st letter with 't

nd slipped his arms into the dress-tunic his servant had brou

lfieri?" Cantap

Is he here? He

ou this Moorish scimitar with his compliments

e anything-anything to free my evening. Tomorrow morning-tomorrow morning I shall wait on the lady. Let Antonio carry her a nosegay with my compliments.

one of the provincial regiments. He was tall and fair, and a certain languor of complexion, inherited from his father's house, was corrected in him by the vivacity of the Donnaz blo

ide with a contemptuous toe. "I sometimes think he botanises," he murmured wit