The Valley of Decision | Page 5

their brats
live in cow-dung, but they must have Indian carpets under their own

feet. Well, ask the abate, then--he has lace ruffles to his coat and a
naked woman painted on his snuff box--What? He only holds his hands
up when you ask? Well, then, go ask your friends on the
chapel-walls--maybe they'll give you a pair of shoes--though Saint
Francis, for that matter, was the father of the discalced, and would
doubtless tell you to go without!" And she would add with a coarse
laugh: "Don't you know that the discalced are shod with gold?"
It was after such a scene that the beggar-noble, as they called him at
Pontesordo, would steal away to the chapel and, seating himself on an
upturned basket or a heap of pumpkins, gaze long into the face of the
mournful saint.
There was nothing unusual in Odo's lot. It was that of many children in
the eighteenth century, especially those whose parents were cadets of
noble houses, with an appanage barely sufficient to keep their wives
and themselves in court finery, much less to pay their debts and clothe
and educate their children. All over Italy at that moment, had Odo
Valsecca but known it, were lads whose ancestors, like his own, had
been dukes and crusaders, but who, none the less, were faring, as he
fared, on black bread and hard blows, and the half-comprehended
taunts of unpaid foster-parents. Many, doubtless, there were who cared
little enough, as long as they might play morro with the farmer's lads
and ride the colt bare-back through the pasture and go bird-netting and
frog-hunting with the village children; but some perhaps, like Odo,
suffered in a dumb animal way, without understanding why life was so
hard on little boys.
Odo, for his part, had small taste for the sports in which Gianozzo and
the village lads took pleasure. He shrank from any amusement
associated with the frightening or hurting of animals, and his bosom
swelled with the fine gentleman's scorn of the clowns who got their fun
in so coarse a way. Now and then he found a moment's glee in a sharp
tussle with one of the younger children who had been tormenting a frog
or a beetle; but he was still too young for real fighting, and could only
hang on the outskirts when the bigger boys closed, and think how some
day he would be at them and break their lubberly heads. There were
thus many hours when he turned to the silent consolations of the chapel.
So familiar had he grown with the images on its walls that he had a
name for every one: the King, the Knight, the Lady, the children with

guinea-pigs, basilisks and leopards, and lastly the Friend, as he called
Saint Francis. An almond-faced lady on a white palfrey with gold
trappings represented his mother, whom he had seen too seldom for any
distinct image to interfere with the illusion; a knight in damascened
armour and scarlet cloak was the valiant captain, his father, who held a
commission in the ducal army; and a proud young man in diadem and
ermine, attended by a retinue of pages, stood for his cousin, the
reigning Duke of Pianura.
A mist, as usual at that hour, was rising from the marshes between
Pontesordo and Pianura, and the light soon ebbed from the saint's face,
leaving the chapel in obscurity. Odo had crept there that afternoon with
a keener sense than usual of the fact that life was hard on little boys;
and though he was cold and hungry and half afraid, the solitude in
which he cowered seemed more endurable than the noisy kitchen where,
at that hour, the farm hands were gathering for their polenta, and
Filomena was screaming at the frightened orphan who carried the
dishes to the table. He knew, of course, that life at Pontesordo would
not last for ever--that in time he would grow up and be mysteriously
transformed into a young gentleman with a sword and laced coat, who
would go to court and perhaps be an officer in the Duke's army or in
that of some neighbouring prince; but, viewed from the lowliness of his
nine years, that dazzling prospect was too remote to yield much solace
for the cuffs and sneers, the ragged shoes and sour bread of the present.
The fog outside had thickened, and the face of Odo's friend was now
discernible only as a spot of pallor in the surrounding dimness. Even he
seemed farther away than usual, withdrawn into the fog as into that
mist of indifference which lay all about Odo's hot and eager spirit. The
child sat down among the gourds and medlars on the muddy floor and
hid his face against his knees.
He had