When Gerald found himself once more in his little room at the Porta Rosa, it was past midnight. He opened his window and sat down at it to gaze out upon the starry sky and drink in the refreshing night air, but, more than even these, to calm down the excitement of his feelings, and endeavour to persuade himself that what he had passed through was not a dream. It is not easy for those who have access to every grade they wish in life—who, perhaps, confer honour where they go—to fashion to their minds the strange, wild conflict that raged within the youth’s heart at this moment. Little as he had seen of the great poet, he could not help comparing him with Gabriel, his acquaintance at the Tana. They were both proud, cold, stern men—strong in conscious power, self-reliant and daring. Are all men of genius of that stamp, thought Gerald. Are they who diffuse through existence its most elevating influences, its most softening emotions—are they hard of mould and stern in character? Does the force with which they move the world require this impulse of temperament, as rivers that traverse great continents come down, at first, from lofty mountains? And if it be so, is not this a heavy price for which to buy even fame? Then, again, he bethought him, what a noble gift to bestow must be the affection of such men—how proud must be they who owned their love or shared their friendship! While he was thus musing a round, warm arm clasped his neck, and Marietta sat down beside him. She had waited hours for his return, and now stole gently to his room to meet him.

‘I could not sleep till I had seen you, caro,’ said she fondly. ‘It seemed as if in these few hours years had separated us.’

‘And if they had, Marietta, they could scarcely have brought about anything stranger. Guess where I have been—with whom I have passed this entire evening?’

‘How can I? Was he a prince?’

‘Greater than any prince.’

‘That must mean a king, then.’

‘Kings die, and a few lines chronicle them; but I speak of one whose memory will be graven in his language, and whose noble sentiments will be texts to future generations. What think you of Alfieri?’

‘Alfieri!’

‘Himself. He was the Count who rescued us from the mob, and with him I have passed the hours since I saw you. Not that I ever knew nor suspected it, Marietta: if I had, I had never dared to speak as I did about ourselves and our wayward lives in such a presence. I had felt these themes ignoble.’

‘How so?’ cried she eagerly. ‘You have ever told me that art was an ennobling and a glorious thing; that after those whose genius embodied grand conceptions, came he who gave them utterance. How often have you said, the poet lives but half in men’s hearts whose verses have not found some meet interpreter; with words like these have you stimulated me to study, and now——’

‘And now,’ said he, sighing drearily, ‘I wake to feel what a mere mockery it is:

Ah, Marietta mia, he who creates is alone an artist!’

The girl bent her head upon her bosom, and while her long waving curls fell loosely over him, she sobbed bitterly. Gerald clasped her closer to his heart, but never spoke a syllable.

‘I ever thought it would be so,’ murmured she at last: ‘I felt that in this sense of birth and blood you boasted of, would one day come a feeling of shame to be the companion of such as me. It is not from art itself you turn away, it is the company of the strolling actor that you shun.’

‘And who or what am I that I should do so?’ said Gerald boldly. ‘When, or where, have I known such happiness as with you, Marietta? Bethink you of the hours we have passed together, poring over these dear old books there, enriching our hearts with noble thoughts, and making the poet the interpreter between us? Telling, too, in the fervour we spoke his lines, how tenderly we felt them; as Metastasio says:

‘And now it is over,’ said she, with a sigh of deep despondency.

‘Why so? Shall I, in learning to know the great and the illustrious—to feel how their own high thoughts sway and rule them—be less worthy of your love? The poet told me, to-night, that I declaimed his lines well; but who taught me to feel them, Marietta mia!’ And he kissed her cheek, bathed as it was and seamed with, hot tears. Again he tried to bring back the dream of the past, and their oft-projected scheme of life; but he urged the theme no longer as of old; and even when describing the world they were about to fly from, his words trembled with the emotion that swelled in his heart. In the midst of all these would he break off suddenly with some recollection of Alfieri, who filled every avenue of his thoughts: his proud but graceful demeanour, his low, deep-toned voice, his smile so kind and yet so sad withal; a gentleness, too, in his manner that invited confidence, seemed to dwell in Gerald’s memory, and shed, as it were, a soft and pleasing light over all that had passed.

‘And I am to see him again to-morrow, Marietta,’ continued he proudly; ‘he is to take me with him to the Galleries. I am to see the Pitti and the Offizzi, where in the Tribune the great triumphs of Raffael are placed, and the statue of Venus, too: he is to show me these, and the portraits of all the illustrious men who have made Italy glorious. How eager I am to know how they looked in life, and if their features revealed the consciousness of the fame they were to inherit! And when I come back at night to thee, Marietta, how full shall I be of all these, and how overjoyed if I can pour into your heart the pleasures that swell in my own! Is it not good, dearest, that I should go forth thus to bring back to you the glad tidings of so many beautiful things—will you not be happier for yourself, prouder in me? Will it not be better to have the love of one whose mind is daily expanding, straining to greater efforts, growing in knowledge and gaining in cultivation? Shall I not be more worthy of you if I win praise from others? And I am resolved to do this, Marietta. I will not be satisfied to be ever the mean, ignoble thing I now am.’

‘Our life did not seem so unworthy in your eyes a day or two ago,’ said she sighing. ‘You told me, as we came up the Val d’Arno, that our wandering, wayward existence had a poetry of its own that you loved dearly. That to you ambition could never offer a path equal to that wayside rambling life, over whose little accidents the softening influences of divine verse shed their mild light, so that the ideal world dominated the actual.’

‘All these will I realise, but in a higher sphere, Marietta. The great Alfieri himself told me that a life without labour is an ignominy and a shame. That he who strains his faculties to attain a goal is nobler far than one whose higher gifts lie rusting in disuse. Man lives not for himself, but for his fellows, said he, nor is there such incarnate selfishness as indolence.’

‘And where, and how, and when is this wondrous life of exertion to be begun?’ said she half-scornfully. ‘Can the great poet pour into your heart out of the fulness of his own, and make you as he is? Or are you suddenly become rich and great, like him?’

The youth started, and an angry flush covered his face, and even his forehead, as he arose and walked the room.

‘I see well what is working within you,’ said the girl. ‘The contrast from that splendour to this misery—these poor bleak walls, where no pictures are hanging, no gilding glitters—is too great for you. It is the same shock to your nature as from the beautiful princess in whose presence you stood to that humble bench beside me.’

‘No, by Heaven! Marietta,’ cried he passionately, ‘I have not an ambition in my heart wherein your share is not allotted. It is that you may walk with me to the goal——’

A scornful gesture of disbelief, one of those movements which, with Italians, have a significance no words ever convey, interrupted his protestation.

‘This is too bad!’ he cried; ‘nor had you ever conceived such distrust of me if your own heart did not give the prompting. There, there,’ cried he, as he pointed his finger at her, while her eyes flashed and sparkled with a wild and lustrous expression, ‘your very looks betray you.’

‘Betray me! this is no betrayal,’ said she haughtily. ‘I have no shame in declaring that I too covet fame, even as you do. Were some mighty patron to condescend to favour me—to fancy that I resembled, I know not what great personage—to imagine that in my traits of look and voice theirs were reflected, it is just as likely I should thank fortune for the accident, and bid adieu to you, as you intend, to-morrow or next day, to take leave of me.’

She spoke boldly and defiantly, her large, full eyes gazing at his with a steadfast and unflinching look, while Gerald held down his head in sorrow and in shame.

Nor was it alone with himself that Gerald was at war, for Marietta had shocked and startled him by qualities he had never suspected in her. In her passion she had declared that her heart was set upon ambitions daring as his own; and, even granting that much of what she said was prompted by wounded pride, there was in her wildly excited glances and her trembling lips the sign of a temperament that knew little of forgiveness. If he was then amazed by discovering Marietta to be different from all he had ever seen her, he was more in love with her than ever.

She had opened the window, and, with her face between her hands, gazed out upon the silent street. Gerald took his place at her side, and thus they remained for some time without a word. A low, faint sigh at last came from the girl, and, placing his arm around her, Gerald drew her gently to him, murmuring softly in her ear:

She never spoke, but, averting her head still farther from him, screened herself from his view. At last a low, soft murmuring broke from her lips, and she sang, in accents scarcely above her breath, one of those little native songs she was so fond of. It was a wild but plaintive air, sounding like the wayward cadences of one who left her fancy free to give music to the verse, each stanza ending with the words:

With a touching tenderness that thrilled through Gerald’s heart she sung, with many a faltering accent, and in a tremulous tone, the simple words:

‘Oh, Marietta, if thou wouldst not wring my heart, do not sing that sad air,’ cried Gerald, pressing her tenderly to him. ‘I bore it ill in our happiest hours, when all went well and hopefully with us.’

‘It bettor suits the present, then,’ said she calmly; then added, with a sudden energy—‘at all events, it suits my humour!’

‘Thou wouldst break with me, then, Marietta?’ said Gerald, relaxing his hold on her, and turning his eyes fully upon her face.

‘Look down there,’ cried she, pointing with her finger: ‘that street beneath us is narrow enough, but it has two exits: why shouldn’t you take one road, and I the other?’

‘Agreed: so be it, then!’ said Gerald passionately, ‘only remember, this project never came from me.’

‘If there be blame for it, I accept it all,’ said she calmly. ‘These things come ever of caprice, and they go as they come. As your own poet has it:

And with a cold smile and a light motion of the hand, as in adieu, she turned away and left the room. Gerald buried his face between his hands and sobbed as though his heart was breaking. Alternately accusing Marietta and himself of cruelty and injustice, his mind was racked by a conflict, to which nothing offered consolation.

He tried to compose himself to sleep: he lay down on his bed, and endeavoured in many ways to induce that calm spirit which leads to slumber; he even murmured to himself the long-forgotten litanies he had learned, as a student, in the college; but the fever that raged within defied all these attempts, and, foiled in his efforts, he arose and left the house. The day was just dawning, and a pinkish streak of sky could be seen over the mountains of Vail’ Ombrosa, while all the vale of the Arno and Florence itself lay in deep shadow, the great ‘Duomo’ and the tall tower at its side not yet catching the first gleam of the rising sun.

Gerald left the gates of the city, and strode on manfully till he gained the crest of the ‘Bello Sguardo,’ whence the view of the city and its environs is peculiarly fine. Here he sat down to gaze on the scene beneath him; that wondrous map, whose history contains records of mingled greatness, crime, genius, noble patriotism, and of treachery so base that all Europe cannot show its equal; and thus gazing, and thus musing, he sank into deep sleep.