"I come straight from her Highness," said he quietly, "and I assume nothing that I am not in a position to affirm."
Odo turned on him with a start. "Do I understand that you have presumed—?"
His minister raised a deprecating hand. "Sir," said he, "the Archduke's envoy is in Pianura."
4.2.
Odo, on his return to Pianura, had taken it for granted that de Crucis would remain in his service.
There had been little talk between the two on the way. The one was deep in his own wretchedness, and the other had too fine a tact to intrude on it; but Odo felt the nearness of that penetrating sympathy which was almost a gift of divination. He was glad to have de Crucis at his side at a moment when any other companionship had been intolerable; and in the egotism of his misery he imagined that he could dispose as he pleased of his friend's future.
After the little Prince's death, however, de Crucis had at once asked permission to leave Pianura. He was perhaps not displeased by Odo's expressions of surprise and disappointment; but they did not alter his decision. He reminded the new Duke that he had been called to Pianura as governor to the late heir, and that, death having cut short his task, he had now no farther pretext for remaining.
Odo listened with a strange sense of loneliness. The responsibilities of his new state weighed heavily on the musing speculative side of his nature. Face to face with the sudden summons to action, with the necessity for prompt and not too-curious choice of means and method, he felt a stealing apathy of the will, an inclination toward the subtle duality of judgment that had so often weakened and diffused his energies. At such a crisis it seemed to him that, de Crucis gone, he remained without a friend. He urged the abate to reconsider his decision, begging him to choose a post about his person.
De Crucis shook his head.
"The offer," said he, "is more tempting to me than your Highness can guess; but my business here is at an end, and must be taken up elsewhere. My calling is that of a pedagogue. When I was summoned to take charge of Prince Ferrante's education I gave up my position in the household of Prince Bracciano not only because I believed that I could make myself more useful in training a future sovereign than the son of a private nobleman, but also," he added with a smile, "because I was curious to visit a state of which your Highness had so often spoken, and because I believed that my residence here might enable me to be of service to your Highness. In this I was not mistaken; and I will gladly remain in Pianura long enough to give your Highness such counsels as my experience suggests; but that business discharged, I must ask leave to go."