The Valley of Decision Book II - The New Light - Section 2.10

In which the Cavaliere Valsecca returns to the ancient palace of his kin to find it a somber monument to fading grandeur, where the duke, his ailing cousin, is tormented by spiritual doubts that reveal the heavy burdens of dynastic duty and piety. As Odo contemplates the haunting gallery of ancestors, he discerns in their faces the slow twilight of a once-mighty line, weighed down by the uneasy contradictions of longstanding privilege and decay.