When one looks back upon the story of his life, he is sure to be struck by the reflection, that its uneventful periods, its seasons of seeming repose, were precisely those which tended most to confirm his character. It is in solitude—in the long watches of a voyage at sea—in those watches more painful still, of a sick-bed, that we make up our account with ourselves, own to our short-comings, and sorrow over our faults. The mental culture that at such seasons we pursue, is equally certain to exercise a powerful influence on us. Out of the busy contest of life—removed, for the moment, from its struggles and ambitions—the soil of our hearts is, as it were, fresh turned, and rapidly matures the new-sown seed we throw upon it. How many date the habits of concentration, by which they have won success in after-life, to the thoughtful hours of a convalescence. It is not merely that isolation and quiet have aided their minds; there is much more in the fact that at such times the heart and the brain work together. Every appeal to reason must be confirmed by a judgment in the higher court of the affections, and out of our emotions as much as out of our convictions do we bend ourselves to believe.

How fresh and invigorated do we come forth from these intervals of peace! less confident, it may be, of ourselves, but far more trustful of others—better pleased with life, and more sanguine of our fellow-men. And no matter how often we may be deceived or disappointed, no matter how frequently our warmest affections have met no requital, let us cherish this hopeful spirit to the last—let us guard ourselves against doubting! There is no such bankruptcy of the heart as distrust.

Gerald was for weeks long a sufferer on a sick-bed. In a small room of the villa, kindly cared for, all his wants supplied by the directions of his wealthy friends, there he lay, pondering over the wayward accident of his life, and insensibly feeding his heart with the conviction that Fate, which had never failed to befriend him in difficulty, had yet some worthy destiny in store for him. He read unceasingly, and of everything. The Marquise constantly sent him her books, and what now interested him no less, the newspapers and pamphlets of the time. It was the first real glimpse he had obtained of the actual world about him; and with avidity he read of the ambitions and rivalries which disturbed Europe—the pretensions of this State, the fears and jealousies of that. Stored as his mind was with poetic images, imbued with a rapturous love for the glowing pictures thus presented, he yet hesitated to decide whether the life of action was not a higher and nobler ambition than the wondrous dreamland of imagination.

In the convent Gerald’s mind had received its first lessons of religion and morality. His sojourn at the Tana had imparted his earliest advances into the world of knowledge through books, and now his captivity at the ‘Camerotto’ opened to him a glance of the real world, its stirring scenes, its deep intrigues, and all the incidents of that stormy sea on which men charter the vessels of their hope. Was it that he forgot Marietta? Had pain and suffering effaced her image; had ambition obliterated it? No; she was ever in his thoughts—the most beautiful and most gifted creature he had ever seen. If he read, it was always with the thought, what would she have said of it? If he sank into a reverie, she was the centre round which his dreams revolved. Her large, mild eyes, her glowing cheek, her full lips, tremulous with feeling, were ever before him; and what would he not have given to be her companion again, wandering the world; blending all that was fascinating in poetic description with scenes wayward enough to have been conjured up by fancy! Why had they deserted him? he asked himself over and over. Had the passing dispute with Marietta determined her to meet him no more? And if so, what influence could she have exercised over the others to induce them to take this step? There was but one of whom he could hope to gain this knowledge—Alfieri himself, whose generosity had succoured them, and in the few and brief moments of the poet’s visit to the villa he had not courage to venture on the question.

The Marquise came frequently to see him, and seemed pleased to talk with him, and lighten the hours of his solitude by engaging him in conversation. Dare he ask her? Could he presume to inquire, from one so high-born and so great what had befallen his humble comrades of the road? How entreat her to trace their steps, or to learn their plans? Had she, indeed, seen Marietta, there would have been no difficulty in the inquiry. Who could have beheld her without feeling an interest in her fate? Brief, however, as had been his intercourse with great people, he had already marked the tone of indolent condescension with which they treated the lives of the very poor. The pity they gave them cost no emotion: if they sorrowed, it was with a grief that had no pang. Their very generosity had more reference to their own sensations than to the feelings of those they befriended. Already, young as he was, did he catch a glimpse of that deep gulf that divides affluence from misery, and in the bitterness of his grief for her who had left him, he exaggerated the callousness of the rich and the sufferings of the poor.

Every comfort was supplied to him, all that care could bestow, or kindness remember, was around him; and yet, why was it his gratitude flowed not in a pure, unsullied stream, but came with uncertain gushes, fitfully, unequally; now sluggish, now turbid; clogged with many a foul weed, eddying with many an uncertain current!

The poison Gabriel had instilled into his heart, if insufficient to kill its nobler influences, was yet enough to render them unsound. The great lesson of that tempter was to ‘distrust,’ never to accept a benefit in life without inquiring what subtle design had prompted it, what deep-laid scheme it might denote. ‘None but a fool bestows without an object,’ was a maxim he had often heard from his lips. Not all the generosity of the youth’s nature—and it was a noble one—could lessen the foul venom of this teaching! To reject it seemed like decrying the wisdom of one who knew life in all its aspects. How could he, a mere boy, ignorant, untravelled, unlettered, place his knowledge of mankind in competition with that of one so universally accomplished as Gabriel? His precepts, too, were uttered so calmly, so dispassionately—a tone of regret even softened them at times, as though he had far rather have spoken well and kindly of the world, if truth would have suffered him. And then he would insidiously add: ‘Don’t accept these opinions, but go out and test them for yourself. The laboratory is before you, experiment at your will.’ As if he had not already put corruption in the crucible, and defiled the vessel wherein the ore should be assayed!

For some days Gerald had seen neither the Count nor the Marquise. A brief note, a few lines, from the latter, once came to say that they continued to take an interest in his welfare, and hoped soon to see him able to move about and leave his room; but that the arrival of a young relative from Rome would probably prevent her being able to visit the Camerotto for some time.

‘They have grown weary of the pleasure of benevolence,’ thought Gerald peevishly; ‘they want some other and more rewarding excitement. The season of the Carnival is drawing nigh, and doubtless fÊtes and theatres will be more gratifying resources than the patronage of such as I.’

It was in a spirit resentful and rebellious that he arose and dressed himself. The very clothes he had to wear were given him—the stick he leaned on was an alms; and his indignation scoffed at his mendicancy, as though it were a wrong against himself.

‘After all,’ said he mockingly, ‘if it were not that I chanced to resemble some dear prince or other, they had left me to starve. I wonder who my prototype may be: what would he say if I proposed to change coats with him? Should I have more difficulty in performing the part of prince, or he that of vagabond?’

In resentful reflections like this he showed how the seeds of Gabriel’s teaching matured and ripened in his heart, darkening hope, stifling even gratitude. To impute to mere caprice, a passing whim, the benevolence of the rich was a favourite theory of Gabriel; and if, when Gerald listened first to such maxims, they made little or no impression upon him, now, in the long silent hours of his solitude, they came up to agitate and excite him. One startling illustration Gabriel had employed, that would occur again and again to the boy’s mind, in spite of himself.

‘These benefactors,’ said he, ‘are like men who help a drowning swimmer to sustain himself a little longer: they never carry him to the shore. Their mission is not rescue, it is only to prolong a struggle, to protract a fate.’

The snow lay on the Apennines, and even on the lower hills around Florence, ere Gerald was sufficiently recovered to move about his room. The great dreary house, silent and tenantless, was a dominion over which he wandered at will, sitting hours long in contemplation of frescoed walls and ceilings, richly carved architraves, and finely chiselled traceries over door and window. Had they who reared such glorious edifices left no heirs nor successors behind them? Why were such splendours left to rot and decay? Why were patches of damp and mildew suffered to injure these marvellous designs? Why were the floors littered with carved and golden fretwork? What new civilisation had usurped the place of the old one, that men preferred lowly dwellings—tasteless, vulgar, and inconvenient—to those noble abodes, elegant and spacious ‘Could it possibly be that the change in men’s minds, the growing assertion of equality, had tended to suppress whatever too boldly indicated superiority of station? Already distinctions of dress were fading away. The embroidered jabot, the rich falling ruffle, the ample peruke, and the slashed and braided coat, were less and less often seen abroad. A simpler and more uniform taste in costume began to prevail, the insignia of rank were seldom paraded in public, and even the liveries of the rich displayed less of costliness and show than in times past. Over and over had Gabriel directed the youth’s attention to these signs, saying, with his own stern significance—

‘You will see, boy, that men will not any longer wait for equality till the churchyard.’

Was the struggle, then, really approaching?—were the real armies, indeed, marshalling their forces for the fight? And if so, with which should he claim brotherhood? His birth and blood inclined him to the noble, but his want and destitution gave him common cause with the miserable.

It was a dreary day of December, a low, leaden sky, heavily charged with rain or snow, stretched over a landscape inexpressibly sad and wretched-looking. The very character of Italian husbandry is one to add greatly to the rueful aspect of a day in winter: dreary fields of maize left to rot on the tall stalks; scrubby olive-trees, in all the deformity of their leafless existence; straggling vine branches, stretching from tree to tree, or hanging carelessly about—all these damp and dripping, in a scene desolate as a desert, with no inhabitants, and no cattle to be seen.

Such was the landscape that Gerald gazed on from a window, and, weary with reading now, stood long to contemplate.

‘How little great folk care for those seasons of gloom!’ thought he. ‘Their indoor life has its thousand resources of luxury and enjoyment: their palaces stored with every appliance of comfort for them—pictures, books, music—all that can charm in converse, all that can elevate by taste about them. What do they know of the trials of those who plod heavily along through mire and rain, weary, footsore, and famishing?’ And Marietta rose to his mind, and he pictured her toiling drearily along, her dress draggled, her garments dripping. He thought he could mark how her proud look seemed to fire with indignation at an unworthy fate, and that a feverish spot on her cheek glowed passionately at the slavery she suffered. ‘And why am I not there to share with her these hardships?’ cried he aloud. ‘Is not this a coward’s part in me to sit here in indolence, and worse again, in mere dependence? I am able to travel: I can, at least, crawl along a few miles a day; strength will come by the effort to regain it. I will seek her through the wide world till I find her. In her companionship alone has my heart ever met response, and my nature been understood.’

A low, soft laugh interrupted these words. He turned, and it was the AbbÉ Girardon, a friend of the Marquise de Bauffremont’s, who always accompanied her, and acted as a sort of secretary in her household. There was a certain half-mocking subtlety, a sort of fine raillery in the manner of the polished AbbÉ which Gerald always hated; and never was he less in the humour to enjoy the society of one whom even friends called ‘malin.’

‘I believed I was alone, sir,’ said Gerald, half haughtily, as the other continued to show his whole teeth in ridicule of the youth’s speech.

‘It was chance gave me the honour of overhearing you,’ replied the AbbÉ, smiling. ‘I opened this door by mere accident, and without expecting to find you here.’

Gerald’s cheek grew crimson. The exceeding courtesy of the other’s manner seemed to him a studied impertinence, and he stared steadfastly at him, without knowing how to reply.

‘And yet,’ resumed the AbbÉ, ‘it was in search of you I came out from Florence this dreary day. I had no other object, I assure you.’

‘Too much honour, Monsieur,’ said Gerald, with a haughty bend of the head; for the raillery, as he deemed it, was becoming insupportable.

‘Not but the tidings I bear would reward me for even a rougher journey,’ said the AbbÉ courteously. ‘You are aware of the deep interest the Marquise de Bauffremont has ever taken in your fortunes. To her care and kindness you owe, indeed, all the attentions your long illness stood in need of. Well, her only difficulty in obtaining a career for you was her inability to learn to what rank in life to ascribe you. You believed yourself noble, and she was most willing to accept the belief. Now, a mere accident has tended to confirm this assumption.’

‘Let me hear what you call this accident, Monsieur l’AbbÉ,’ broke in Gerald anxiously.

‘It was an observation made yesterday at dinner by Sir Horace Mann. In speaking of the Geraldines, and addressing Count Gherardini for confirmation, he said: “The earldom of Desmond, which is held by a branch of the family, is yet the youngest title of the house.” And the Count answered quickly: “Your Excellency is right; we date from a long time back. There ‘s an insolent proverb in our house that says, ‘Meglio un Gherardini bastardo che un Corsini ben nato.’” Madame de Bauffremont caught at the phrase, and made him repeat it. In a word, Monsieur, she was but too happy to avail herself of what aided a foregone conclusion. She wished you to be noble, and you were so.’

‘But I am noble!’ cried Gerald boldly. ‘I want no hazards like these to establish my station. Let them inquire how I am enrolled in the college.’

‘Of what college do you speak?’ asked the AbbÉ quickly.

‘It matters not,’ stammered out Gerald, in confusion at thus having betrayed himself into a reference to his past. ‘None have the right to question me on these things.’

‘A student enrolled with his due title,’ suggested the wily AbbÉ, ‘would at once stand independent of all generous interpretation.’

‘You will learn no more from me, Monsieur l’AbbÉ,’ said the youth disdainfully. ‘I shall not seek to prove a rank from which I ask to derive no advantage. They called me t’other day, at the tribunal, a “vagabond”: that is the only title the law of Tuscany gives me.’

The AbbÉ, with a tact skilled to overcome far greater difficulties, strove to allay the youth’s irritation, and smooth down the asperity which recent illness, as well as temperament, excited, and at last succeeded so far that Gerald seated himself at his side, and listened calmly to the plan which the Marquise had formed for his future life. At some length, and with a degree of address that deprived the subject of anything that could alarm the jealous susceptibility of the boy’s nature, the AbbÉ related that a custom prevailed in certain great houses (whose alliances with royalty favoured the privilege) of attaching to their household young cadets of noble families, who served in a capacity similar to that of courtier to the person of the king. They were ‘gentlemen of the presence,’ pages or equerries, as their age or pretensions decided; and, in fact, from the followers of such houses as the De Rohan, the Noailles, the Tavannes, and the Bauffre-mont, did royalty itself recruit its personal attendants. Monsieur de Girardon was too shrewd a reader of character not to perceive that any description of the splendours and fascinations of a life of voluptuous ease would be less captivating to such a youth than a picture of a career full of incident and adventure, and so he dwelt almost exclusively on all that such a career could offer of high ambition, the army being chiefly officered by the private influence of the great families of France.

‘You will thus,’ said he, at the close of a clever description; ‘you will thus, at the very threshold of life, enjoy what the luckiest rarely attain till later on—the choice of what road you will take. If the splendour of a court life attract you, you can be a courtier; if the ambitions of statesmanship engross your mind, you are sure of office; if you aspire to military glory, here is your shortest road to it; or if,’ said he, with a graceful melancholy, ‘you can submit yourself to be a mere guest at the banquet of life, and never a host—one whose place at the table is assigned him, not taken by right—such, in a word, as I am—why, then, the AbbÉ’s frock is an easy dress, and a safe passport besides.’

With a sort of unintentional carelessness, that seemed frankness itself, the AbbÉ glided into a little narrative of his own early life, and how, with a wide choice of a career before him, he had, half in indolence, half in self-indulgence, adopted the gown.

‘Stern thinkers call men like me mere idlers in the vineyard, drones in the great human hive: but we are not; we have our uses just as every other luxury. We are to society what the bouquet is to the desert; our influence on mankind is not the less real, that its exercise attracts little notice.’

‘And what am I to be, what to do?’ asked Gerald proudly.

‘Imagine the Marquise de Bauffremont to be Royalty, and you are a courtier; you are of her household, in attendance on her great receptions; you accompany her on visits of ceremony—your rank securing you all the deference that is accorded to birth, and admission to the first circles in Paris.’

‘Is not this service menial?’ asked he quickly.

‘It is not thus the world regards it. The Melcours, the Frontignards, the Montrouilles are to be found at this moment in these ranks.’

‘But they are recognised by these very names,’ cried Gerald; ‘but who knows me, or what title do I bear?’

‘You will be the Chevalier de Fitzgerald; the Marquise has influence enough at court to have the title confirmed. Believe me,’ added he, smiling blandly, ‘everything has been provided for—all forethought taken already.’

‘But shall I be free to abandon this—servitude’ (the word would out, though he hesitated to utter it)—‘if I find it onerous or unpleasant? Am I under no obligation or pledge?’

‘None; you are the arbiter of your own fortune at any moment you wish.’

‘You smile, sir, and naturally enough, that one poor and friendless as I am should make such conditions; but remember, my liberty is all my wealth—so long as I have that, so long am I master of myself: free to come and go, I am not lost to self-esteem. I accept,’ and so saying, he gave his hand to the AbbÉ, who pressed it cordially, in ratification of the compact.

‘You will return with me to Florence, Monsieur le Chevalier,’ said the AbbÉ, rising, and assuming a degree of courteous respect which Gerald at once saw was to be his right for the future.