Odo stood gazing after them. Their words, their aspect, seemed an echo of his reading. The father in his plain broadcloth and square-buckled shoes, the daughter with her unpowdered hair and spreading hat, might have stepped from the pages 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 the road and, breaking one of the blossoming twigs, thrust it in the breast of his uniform. Then he walked down the hill to the inn where the horses waited. Half an hour later he rode up to the house where he lodged in the Piazza San Carlo. In the archway Cantapresto, heavy with a nine years' accretion of fat, laid an admonishing hand on his bridle. "Cavaliere, the Countess's black boy--" "Well?" "Three several times has battered the door down with a missive." "Well?" "The last time, I shook him off with the message that you would be there before him." "Be where?" "At the Valentino; but that was an hour ago!" Odo slipped from the saddle. "I must dress first. Call a chair; or no--write a letter for me first. Let Antonio carry it." The ex-soprano, wheezing under the double burden of flesh and consequence, had painfully laboured after Odo up the high stone flights to that young gentleman's modest lodgings, and they stood together in a study lined with books and hung with prints and casts from the antique. Odo threw off his dusty coat and called the servant to remove his boots. "Will you read the lady's letters, cavaliere?" Cantapresto asked, obsequiously offering them on a lacquered tray. "No--no: write first. Begin 'My angelic lady'--" "You began the last letter in those terms, cavaliere," his scribe reminded him with suspended pen. "The devil! Well, then--wait. 'Throned goddess'--" "You ended the last letter with 'throned goddess.'" "Curse the last letter! Why did you send it?" Odo sprang up and slipped his arms into the dress-tunic his servant had brought him. "Write anything. Say that I am suddenly summoned by--" "By the Count Alfieri?" Cantapresto suggested. "Count Alfieri? Is he here? He has returned?" "He arrived an hour ago, cavaliere. He sent you this Moorish scimitar with his compliments. I understand he comes recently from Spain." "Imbecile, not to have told me before! Quick, Antonio--my gloves, my sword." Odo, flushed and animated, buckled his sword-belt with impatient hands. "Write 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. Did you see him Cantapresto? Was he in good health? Does he sup at home? He left no message? Quick, Antonio, a chair!" he cried with his hand on the door.