such considerations, or at least
weakened the impulse to act on them. Cantapresto as usual had attracted
notice at court. His glibness and versatility amused the Duke, and to
Odo he was as difficult to put off as a bad habit. He had become so
accomplished a servant that he seemed a sixth sense of his master's; and
when the latter prepared to start on his travels Cantapresto took his
usual seat in the chaise.

To a traveller of Odo's temper there could be few more agreeable
journeys than the one on which he was setting out, and the Duke being in
no haste to have his commission executed, his messenger had full leisure
to enjoy every stage of the way. He profited by this to visit several of
the small principalities north of the Apennines before turning toward
Genoa, whence he was to take ship for the South. When he left Monte
Alloro the land had worn the bleached face of February, and it was
amazing to his northern-bred eyes to find himself, on the sea-coast, in
the full exuberance of summer. Seated by this halcyon shore, Genoa, in
its carved and frescoed splendour, just then celebrating with the
customary gorgeous ritual the accession of a new Doge, seemed to Odo
like the richly-inlaid frame of some Renaissance "triumph." But the
splendid houses with their marble peristyles, and the painted villas in
their orange-groves along the shore, housed a dull and narrow-minded
society, content to amass wealth and play biribi under the eyes of their
ancestral Vandykes, without any concern as to the questions agitating
the world. A kind of fat commercial dulness, a lack of that personal
distinction which justifies magnificence, seemed to Odo the prevailing
note of the place; nor was he sorry when his packet set sail for Naples.

Here indeed he found all the vivacity that Genoa lacked. Few cities
could at first acquaintance be more engaging to the stranger. Dull and
brown as it appeared after the rich tints of Genoa, yet so gloriously
did sea and land embrace it, so lavishly the sun gild and the moon
silver it, that it seemed steeped in the surrounding hues of nature. And
what a nature to eyes subdued to the sober tints of the north! Its
spectacular quality--that studied sequence of effects ranging from the
translucent outline of Capri and the fantastically blue mountains of the
coast, to Vesuvius lifting its torch above the plain--this prodigal
response to fancy's claims suggested the boundless invention of some
great scenic artis