'These benefactors,' said he, 'are like men who help a drowning swimmer to sustain himself a little longer: they never carry him to the sh.o.r.e.

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 n.o.ble abodes, elegant and s.p.a.cious 'Could it possibly be that the change in men's minds, the growing a.s.sertion 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 n.o.ble, but his want and dest.i.tution 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 pa.s.sionately 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 Abbe 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 Abbe 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 Abbe, 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 Abbe, 'it was in search of you I came out from Florence this dreary day. I had no other object, I a.s.sure 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 Abbe 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 n.o.ble, and she was most willing to accept the belief. Now, a mere accident has tended to confirm this a.s.sumption.'

'Let me hear what you call this accident, Monsieur l'Abbe,' 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 t.i.tle 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 b.a.s.t.a.r.do 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 n.o.ble, and you were so.'

'But I am n.o.ble!' 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 Abbe 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 t.i.tle,' suggested the wily Abbe, 'would at once stand independent of all generous interpretation.'

'You will learn no more from _me_, Monsieur l'Abbe,' 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 t.i.tle the law of Tuscany gives me.'

The Abbe, 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 Abbe related that a custom prevailed in certain great houses (whose alliances with royalty favoured the privilege) of attaching to their household young cadets of n.o.ble 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 a.s.signed him, not taken by right--such, in a word, as I am--why, then, the Abbe's frock is an easy dress, and a safe pa.s.sport besides.'

With a sort of unintentional carelessness, that seemed frankness itself, the Abbe 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 t.i.tle do _I_ bear?'

'You will be the Chevalier de Fitzgerald; the Marquise has influence enough at court to have the t.i.tle 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 Abbe, who pressed it cordially, in ratification of the compact.

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

BOOK THE SECOND

CHAPTER I. THE 'SALLE DES GARDES'

In a large salon of the palace at Versailles, opening upon a terrace, and with a view of the vast forest beneath it, were a.s.sembled a number of officers, whose splendid uniforms and costly equipments proclaimed them to be of the bodyguard of the king. They had just risen from table, and were either enjoying their coffee in easy indolence, gathered in little knots for conversation, or arranging themselves into parties for play.

The most casual glance at them would have shown what it is but fair to confess they never sought to conceal--that they were the pampered favourites of their master. It was not alone the richness of their embroidered dress, the boundless extravagance that all around them displayed, but, more than even these, a certain air of haughty pretension, the carriage and bearing of a privileged cla.s.s, proclaimed that they took their rank from the high charge that a.s.signed them the guard of the person of the sovereign.

When the power and sway of the monarchy suffered no check--so long as the nation was content to be grateful for the virtues of royalty, and indulgent to its faults--while yet the prestige of past reigns of splendour prevailed, the 'Garde du Corps' were great favourites with the public: their handsome appearance, the grace of their horsemanship, their personal elegance, even their very waste and extravagance had its meed of praise from those who felt a reflected pride from the glittering display of the court. Already, however, signs of an approaching change evidenced themselves: a graver tone of reprehension was used in discussing the abandoned habits of the n.o.bility; painfully drawn pictures of the poor were contrasted with the boundless waste of princely households; the flatteries that once followed every new caprice of royal extravagance, and which imparted to the festivities of the Trianon the gorgeous colours of a romance, were now exchanged for bare recitals, wherein splendour had a cold and chilling l.u.s.tre. If the cloud were no bigger than a man's hand, it was charged with deadliest lightning.

The lack of that deference which they had so long regarded as their due, made these haughty satraps but haughtier and more insolent in their manner toward the citizens. Every day saw the breach widen between them; and what formerly had been oppression on one side and yielding on the other, were now occasions of actual collision, wherein the proud soldier was not always the victor. If the newspapers were strong on one side, the language of society was less measured on the other. The whole tone of conversation caught its temper from the times; and 'the bourgeois'

was ridiculed and laughed at unceasingly. The witty talker sought no other theme; the courtly epigrammatist selected no other subject; and even royalty itself was made to laugh at the stage exhibitions of those whose loyalty had once, at least, been the bulwark of the monarchy.

In the s.p.a.cious apartment already mentioned, and at a small table before an open window, sat a party of three, over their wine. One was a tall, spare, dark-complexioned man, with something Spanish in his look, the Duc de Bourguignon, a captain in the Garde; the second was a handsome but over-conceited-looking youth, of about twenty-two or three, the Marquis de Maurepas. The third was Gerald, or as he was then and there called, Le Chevalier de Fitzgerald. Though the two latter were simple soldiers, all their equipment was as costly as that of the officer at their side. As little was there any difference in their manner of addressing him. Maurepas, indeed, seemed rather disposed to take the lead in conversation, and a.s.sumed a sort of authority in all he said, to which the Duke gave the kind of a.s.sent usually accorded to the 'talkers by privilege.' The young Marquis had all the easy flippancy of a practised narrator, and talked like one who rarely fell upon an unwilling audience.