an almost bursting heart he threw himself upon
his bed; and sobbed there till he fell asleep. When the first gleam of
sunlight broke upon him he awoke, and as suddenly remembered all his
griefs of the day before, and he sat down upon his bed to think over
what he should do.

'If I could but find out the Conte at Rome, or even the Fra Luke,'
thought he; but alas! he had no clue to either. 'I know it; I have it,'
exclaimed he at last. 'There is a life which I can live without fearing
reproach from those about me. I'll go and be a charcoal-burner in the
Maremma. The Carbonari will not refuse to have me, and I'll set out for
the forest at once.'

When Gerald had uttered this resolve it was in the bitterness of despair
that he spoke, since of all the varied modes by which men earned
a livelihood, none was in such universal disrepute as that of a
charcoal-burner; and when the humblest creature of the streets said 'I
'd as soon be a charcoal-burner,' he expressed the direst aspect of his
misery.

It was not, indeed, that either the life or the labour had anything
degrading in itself, but, generally, they who followed it were outcasts
and vagabonds--the irreclaimable sweepings of towns, or the incorrigible
youth of country districts, who sought in the wild and wandering
existence a freedom from all ties of civilisation; the life of the
forest in all its savagery, but in all its independence. The chief
resort of these men was a certain district in those low-lying lands
along the coast, called Maremmas, and where, from the undrained
character of the soil and rapid decomposition of vegetable matter ever
going on, disease of the most deadly form existed--ague and fever
being the daily condition of all who dwelt there. Nothing but habits of
wildest excess, and an utter indifference to life, could make men brave
such an existence; but their recompense was, that this district was
a species of sanctuary where the law never entered. Beyond certain
well-known limits the hardiest carbineer never crossed; and it was well
known that he who crossed that frontier came as fugitive, and not as
foe. Many, it is true, of those who sojourned here were attainted
with the deepest crimes--men for whom no hope of return to the world
remained, outcasts branded with undying infamy; but others there
were, mere victims of dissipation and folly--rash youths, who had so
irretrievably compromised their fair fame that they had nothing left but
to seek obl