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BOOK I - THE OLD ORDER: CHAPTER 6
1.6.
Odo, who, like all neglected children, was quick to note in the
demeanour of his elders any hint of a change in his own condition, had
been keenly conscious of the effect produced at Donnaz by the news of
the Duchess of Pianura's deliverance. Guided perhaps by his mother's
exclamation, he noticed an added zeal in Don Gervaso's teachings and an
unction in the manner of his aunts and grandmother, who embraced him as
though they were handling a relic; while the old Marquess, though he
took his grandson seldomer on his rides, would sit staring at him with a
frowning tenderness that once found vent in the growl--"Morbleu, but
he's too good for the tonsure!" All this made it clear to Odo that he
was indeed meant for the Church, and he learned without surprise that
the following spring he was to be sent to the seminary at Asti.
With a view to prepare him for this change, the canonesses suggested his
attending them that year on their annual pilgrimage to the sanctuary of
Oropa. Thither, for every feast of the Assumption, these pious ladies
travelled in their litter; and Odo had heard from them many tales of the
miraculous Black Virgin who drew thousands to her shrine among the
mountains. They set forth in August, two days before the feast,
ascending through chestnut groves to the region of bare rocks; thence
downward across torrents hung with white acacia and along park-like
grassy levels deep in shade. The lively air, the murmur of verdure, the
perfume of mown grass in the meadows and the sweet call of the cuckoos
from every thicket made an enchantment of the way; but Odo's pleasure
redoubled when, gaining the high-road to Oropa, they mingled with the
long train of devotees ascending from the plain. Here were pilgrims of
every condition, from the noble lady of Turin or Asti (for it was the
favourite pilgrimage of the Sardinian court), attended by her physician
and her cicisbeo, to the half-naked goatherd of Val Sesia or Salluzzo;
the cheerful farmers of the Milanese, with their wives, in silver
necklaces and hairpins, riding pillion on plump white asses; sick
persons travelling in closed litters or carried on hand-stretchers;
crippled beggars obtruding their deformities; confraternities of hooded
penitents, Franciscans, Capuchins and Poor Clares in dusty companies;
jugglers, pedlars, Egyptians and sellers of drugs and amulets. From
among these, as the canonesses' litter jogged along, an odd figure
advanced toward Odo, who had obtained leave to do the last mile of the
journey on foot. This was a plump abate in tattered ecclesiastical
dress, his shoes white as a miller's and the perspiration streaking his
face as he laboured along in the dust. He accosted Odo in a soft shrill
voice, begging leave to walk beside the young cavaliere, whom he had
more than once had the honour of seeing at Pianura; and, in reply to the
boy's surprised glance, added, with a swelling of the chest and an
absurd gesture of self-introduction, "But perhaps the cavaliere is not
too young to have heard of the illustrious Cantapresto, late primo
soprano of the ducal theatre of Pianura?"
Odo being obliged to avow his ignorance, the fat creature mopped his
brow and continued with a gasp--"Ah, your excellency, what is fame? From
glory to obscurity is no farther than from one milestone to another! Not
eight years ago, cavaliere, I was followed through the streets of
Pianura by a greater crowd than the Duke ever drew after him! But what
then? The voice goes--it lasts no longer than the bloom of a flower--and
with it goes everything: fortune, credit, consideration, friends and
parasites! Not eight years ago, sir--would you believe me?--I was
supping nightly in private with the Bishop, who had nearly quarrelled
with his late Highness for carrying me off by force one evening to his
casino; I was heaped with dignities and favours; all the poets in the
town composed sonnets in my honour; the Marquess of Trescorre fought a
duel about me with the Bishop's nephew, Don Serafino; I attended his
lordship to Rome; I spent the villeggiatura at his villa, where I sat at
play with the highest nobles in the land; yet when my voice went,
cavaliere, it was on my knees I had to beg of my heartless patron the
paltry favour of the minor orders!" Tears were running down the abate's
cheeks, and he paused to wipe them with a corner of tattered bands.
Though Odo had been bred in an abhorrence of the theatre, the strange
creature's aspect so pricked his compassion that he asked him what he
was now engaged in; at which Cantapresto piteously cried, "Alas, what am
I not engaged in, if the occasion offers? For whatever a man's habit, he
will not wear it long if it cover an empty belly; and he that respects
his calling must find food enough to continue in it. But as for me, sir,
I have put a hand to every trade, from composing scenarios for the ducal
company of Pianura, to writing satirical sonnets for noblemen that
desire to pass for wits. I've a pretty taste, too, in compiling
almanacks, and when nothing else served I have played the public
scrivener at the street corner; nay, sir, necessity has even driven me
to hold the candle in one or two transactions I would not more actively
have mixed in; and it was to efface the remembrance of one of these--for
my conscience is still over-nice for my condition--that I set out on
this laborious pilgrimage."
Much of this was unintelligible to Odo; but he was moved by any mention
of Pianura, and in the abate's first pause he risked the question--"Do
you know the hump-backed boy Brutus?"
His companion stared and pursed his soft lips.
"Brutus?" says he. "Brutus? Is he about the Duke's person?"
"He lives in the palace," said Odo doubtfully.
The fat ecclesiastic clapped a hand to his thigh.
"Can it be your excellency has in mind the foundling boy Carlo Gamba?
Does the jackanapes call himself Brutus now? He was always full of his
classical allusions! Why, sir, I think I know him very well; he is even
rumoured to be a brother of Don Lelio Trescorre's, and I believe the
Duke has lately given him to the Marquess of Cerveno, for I saw him not
long since in the Marquess's livery at Pontesordo."
"Pontesordo?" cried Odo. "It was there I lived."
"Did you indeed, cavaliere? But I think you will have been at the Duke's
manor of that name; and it was the hunting-lodge on the edge of the
chase that I had in mind. The Marquess uses it, I believe, as a kind of
casino; though not without risk of a distemper. Indeed, there is much
wonder at his frequenting it, and 'tis said he does so against the
Duke's wishes."
The name of Pontesordo had set Odo's memories humming like a hive of
bees, and without heeding his companion's allusions he asked--"And did
you see the Momola?"
The other looked his perplexity.
"She's an Innocent too," Odo hastened to explain. "She is Filomena's
servant at the farm."
The abate at this, standing still in the road, screwed up his eyelids
and protruded a relishing lip. "Eh, eh," said he, "the girl from the
farm, you say?" And he gave a chuckle. "You've an eye, cavaliere, you've
an eye," he cried, his soft body shaking with enjoyment; but before Odo
could make a guess at his meaning their conversation was interrupted by
a sharp call from the litter. The abate at once disappeared in the
crowd, and a moment later the litter had debouched on the grassy
quadrangle before the outer gates of the monastery. This space was set
in beech-woods, amid which gleamed the white-pillared chapels of the Way
of the Cross; and the devouter pilgrims, dispersed beneath the trees,
were ascending from one chapel to another, preparatory to entering the
church.
The quadrangle itself was crowded with people, and the sellers of votive
offerings, in their booths roofed with acacia-boughs, were driving a
noisy trade in scapulars and Agnus Deis, images of the Black Virgin of
Oropa, silver hearts and crosses, and phials of Jordan water warranted
to effect the immediate conversion of Jews and heretics. In one corner a
Carmelite missionary had set up his portable pulpit, and, crucifix in
hand, was exhorting the crowd; in another, an improvisatore intoned
canticles to the miraculous Virgin; a barefoot friar sat selling
indulgences at the monastery gate, and pedlars with trays of rosaries
and religious prints pushed their way among the pilgrims. Young women of
less pious aspect solicited the attention of the better-dressed
travellers, and jugglers, mountebanks and quacks of every description
hung on the outskirts of the square. The sight speedily turned Odo's
thought from his late companion, and the litter coming to a halt he was
leaning forward to observe the antics of a tumbler who had spread his
carpet beneath the trees, when the abate's face suddenly rose to the
surface of the throng and his hand thrust a crumpled paper between the
curtains of the litter. Odo was quick-witted enough to capture this
missive without attracting the notice of his grand-aunts, and stealing a
glance at it, he read--"Cavaliere, I starve. When the illustrious ladies
descend, for Christ's sake beg a scudo of them for the unhappy
Cantapresto."
By this the litter had disengaged itself and was moving toward the outer
gates. Odo, aware of the disfavour with which the theatre was viewed at
Donnaz, and unable to guess how far the soprano's present habit would be
held to palliate the scandal of his former connection, was perplexed how
to communicate his petition to the canonesses. A moment later, however,
the question solved itself; for as the aunts descended at the door of
the rector's lodging, the porter, running to meet them, stumbled on a
black mass under the arcade, and raised the cry that here was a man
dropped dead. A crowd gathering, some one called out that it was an
ecclesiastic had fallen; whereat the great-aunts were hurrying forward
when Odo whispered the eldest, Donna Livia, that the sick man was indeed
an abate from Pianura. Donna Livia immediately bid her servants lift him
into the porter's lodge, where, with the administering of spirits, the
poor soprano presently revived and cast a drowning glance about the
chamber.
"Eight years ago, illustrious ladies," he gurgled, "I had nearly died
one night of a surfeit of ortolans; and now it is of a surfeit of
emptiness that I am perishing."
The ladies at this, with exclamations of pity, called on the
lay-brothers for broth and cordials, and bidding the porter enquire more
particularly into the history of the unhappy ecclesiastic, hastened away
with Odo to the rector's parlour.
Next morning betimes all were afoot for the procession, which the
canonesses were to witness from the monastery windows. The apothecary
had brought word that the abate, whose seizure was indeed the result of
hunger, was still too weak to rise; and Donna Livia, eager to open her
devotions with an act of pity, pressed a sequin in the man's hand, and
bid him spare no care for the sufferer's comfort.
This sent Odo in a cheerful mood to the red-hung windows, whence,
peering between the folds of his aunts' gala habits, he admired the
great court enclosed in nobly-ordered cloisters and strewn with fresh
herbs and flowers. Thence one of the rector's chaplains conducted them
to the church, placing them, in company with the monastery's other noble
guests, in a tribune constructed above the choir. It was Odo's first
sight of a great religious ceremony, and as he looked down on the church
glimmering with votive offerings and gold-fringed draperies, and seen
through rolling incense in which the altar-candles swam like stars
reflected in a river, he felt an almost sensual thrill of pleasure at
the thought that his life was to be passed amid scenes of such mystic
beauty. The sweet singing of the choir raised his spirit to a higher
view of the scene; and the sight of the huddled misery on the floor of
the church revived in him the old longing for the Franciscan cowl.
From these raptures he was speedily diverted by the sight awaiting him
at the conclusion of the mass. Hardly had the spectators returned to the
rector's windows when, the doors of the church swinging open, a
procession headed by the rector himself descended the steps and began to
make the circuit of the court. Odo's eyes swam with the splendour of
this burst of banners, images and jewelled reliquaries, surmounting the
long train of tonsured heads and bathed in a light almost blinding after
the mild penumbra of the church. As the monks advanced, the pilgrims,
pouring after them, filled the court with a dark undulating mass through
which the procession wound like a ray of sunlight down the brown bosom
of a torrent. Branches of oleander swung in the air, devout cries hailed
the approach of the Black Madonna's canopy, and hoarse voices swelled to
a roar the measured litanies of the friars.
The ceremonies over, Odo, with the canonesses, set out to visit the
chapels studding the beech-knoll above the monastic buildings. Passing
out of Juvara's great portico they stood a moment above the grassy
common, which presented a scene in curious contrast to that they had
just quitted. Here refreshment-booths had been set up, musicians were
fiddling, jugglers unrolling their carpets, dentists shouting out the
merits of their panaceas, and light women drinking with the liveried
servants of the nobility. The very cripples who had groaned the loudest
in church now rollicked with the mountebanks and dancers; and no trace
remained of the celebration just concluded but the medals and relics
strung about the necks of those engaged in these gross diversions.
It was strange to pass from this scene to the solitude of the grove,
where, in a twilight rustling with streams, the chapels lifted their
white porches. Peering through the grated door of each little edifice,
Odo beheld within a group of terra-cotta figures representing some scene
of the Passion--here a Last Supper, with a tigerish Judas and a Saint
John resting his yellow curls on his Master's bosom, there an Entombment
or a group of stricken Maries. These figures, though rudely modelled and
daubed with bright colours, yet, by a vivacity of attitude and gesture
which the mystery of their setting enhanced, conveyed a thrilling
impression of the sacred scenes set forth; and Odo was yet at an age
when the distinction between flesh-and-blood and its plastic
counterfeits is not clearly defined, or when at least the sculptured
image is still a mysterious half-sentient thing, denizen of some strange
borderland between art and life. It seemed to him, as he gazed through
the chapel gratings, that those long-distant episodes of the divine
tragedy had been here preserved in some miraculous state of suspended
animation, and as he climbed from one shrine to another he had the sense
of treading the actual stones of Gethsemane and Calvary.
As was usual with him, the impressions of the moment had effaced those
preceding it, and it was almost with surprise that, at the rector's
door, he beheld the primo soprano of Pianura totter forth to the litter
and offer his knee as a step for the canonesses. The charitable ladies
cried out on him for this imprudence, and his pallor still giving
evidence of distress, he was bidden to wait on them after supper with
his story. He presented himself promptly in the parlour, and being
questioned as to his condition at once rashly proclaimed his former
connection with the ducal theatre of Pianura. No avowal could have been
more disastrous to his cause. The canonesses crossed themselves with
horror, and the abate, seeing his mistake, hastened to repair it by
exclaiming--"What, ladies, would you punish me for following a vocation
to which my frivolous parents condemned me when I was too young to
resist their purpose? And have not my subsequent sufferings, my penances
and pilgrimages, and the state to which they have reduced me,
sufficiently effaced the record of an involuntary error?"
Seeing the effect of this appeal the abate made haste to follow up his
advantage. "Ah, illustrious ladies," he cried, "am I not a living
example of the fate of those who leave all to follow righteousness? For
while I remained on the stage, among the most dissolute surroundings,
fortune showered me with every benefit she heaps on her favourites. I
had my seat at every table in Pianura; the Duke's chair to carry me to
the theatre; and more money than I could devise how to spend; while now
that I have resigned my calling to embrace the religious life, you see
me reduced to begging a crust from the very mendicants I formerly
nourished. For," said he, moved to tears by his own recital, "my
superfluity was always spent in buying the prayers of the unfortunate,
and to judge how I was esteemed by those acquainted with my private
behaviour you need only learn that, on my renouncing the stage, 'twas
the Bishop of Pianura who himself accorded me the tonsure."
This discourse, which Odo admired for its adroitness, visibly excited
the commiseration of the ladies; but at mention of the Bishop, Donna
Livia exchanged a glance with her sister, who enquired, with a quaint
air of astuteness, "But how comes it, abate, that with so powerful a
protector you have been exposed to such incredible reverses?"
Cantapresto rolled a meaning eye.
"Alas, madam, it was through my protector that misfortune attacked me;
for his lordship having appointed me secretary to his favourite nephew,
Don Serafino, that imprudent nobleman required of me services so
incompatible with my cloth that disobedience became a duty; whereupon,
not satisfied with dismissing me in disgrace, he punished me by
blackening my character to his uncle. To defend myself was to traduce
Don Serafino; and rather than reveal his courses to the Bishop I sank to
the state in which you see me; a state," he added with emotion, "that I
have travelled this long way to commend to the adorable pity of Her
whose Son had not where to lay His head."
This stroke visibly touched the canonesses, still soft from the
macerations of the morning; and Donna Livia compassionately asked how he
had subsisted since his rupture with the Bishop.
"Madam, by the sale of my talents in any service not at odds with my
calling: as the compiling of pious almanacks, the inditing of rhymed
litanies and canticles, and even the construction of theatrical
pieces"--the ladies lifted hands of reprobation--"of theatrical pieces,"
Cantapresto impressively repeated, "for the use of the Carmelite nuns of
Pianura. But," said he with a deprecating smile, "the wages of virtue
are less liberal than those of sin, and spite of a versatility I think I
may honestly claim, I have often had to subsist on the gifts of the
pious, and sometimes, madam, to starve on their compassion."
This ready discourse, and the soprano's evident distress, so worked on
the canonesses that, having little money at their disposal, it was
fixed, after some private consultation, that he should attend them to
Donnaz, where Don Gervaso, in consideration of his edifying conduct in
renouncing the stage, might be interested in helping him to a situation;
and when the little party set forth from Oropa, the abate Cantapresto
closed the procession on one of the baggage-mules, with Odo riding
pillion at his back. Good fortune loosened the poor soprano's tongue,
and as soon as the canonesses' litter was a safe distance ahead he began
to beguile the way with fragments of reminiscence and adventure. Though
few of his allusions were clear to Odo, the glimpse they gave of the
motley theatrical life of the north Italian cities--the quarrels between
Goldoni and the supporters of the expiring commedia dell' arte--the
rivalries of the prime donne and the arrogance of the popular
comedians--all these peeps into a tinsel world of mirth, cabal and
folly, enlivened by the recurring names of the Four Masks, those
lingering gods of the older dispensation, so lured the boy's fancy and
set free his vagrant wonder, that he was almost sorry to see the keep of
Donnaz reddening in the second evening's sunset.
Such regrets, however, their arrival at the castle soon effaced; for in
the doorway stood the old Marquess, a letter in hand, who springing
forward caught his grandson by the shoulders, and cried with his great
boar-hunting shout, "Cavaliere, you are heir-presumptive of Pianura!"
Content of BOOK I - THE OLD ORDER: CHAPTER 6 [Edith Wharton's novel: The Valley Of Decision]
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