iel said: 'I have
told you, Gerald, that I made a journey to Rome on your account. I have
been to the Jesuit College; conversed with the superior; saw your
cell, your torn school-books, your little table carved over with
your pen-knife; and, by a date scratched on a window-pane, was led to
discover where you had passed the evening of the fifth of January.'

'And did you go _there_ also?' asked Gerald eagerly.

'Ay, boy. I gave an afternoon to the Altieri and the cafe in front of
it.'

'You saw the Count, then?'

'No, I have not seen him,' said Gabriel dryly. 'He was away from Rome
at a villa, I believe; but I have learned that, indignant at your flight
from the Cardinal's villa, he absolves himself of all further interest
in you.'

'Have you seen Fra Luke?' asked the boy, who now talked as if the other
had known every incident of his life.

'No; he too was away. In fact, Gerald, there was little to learn, and I
came back very nearly as I went. I only know that you are about as much
alone in the world as myself. We are meet companions. You said, a while
ago, you were curious to know who and what I was. You shall hear. I
am of a good Provencal family, originally derived from Italy. We are
counts, from a date before the Medici; so much for blood. As to fortune,
my grandfather was rich, and my own father enjoyed a reasonable
fortune. I was, however, brought up to believe all men my brothers; all
interested alike in serving and aiding each other: helping in the cause
of that excellent thing we are pleased to call Humanity; and as a creed
firmly believing that, bating a chance yielding to temptation, a little
backsliding now and then on the score of an evil passion, men and women
were wonderfully good, and were on the road to be better. We were most
ingenious in our devices to build up this belief. My father wrote books
and delivered lectures to prove it. He did more: he squandered all his
patrimony in support of his theory, and he trained me up to be--what I
am.' And the last words were uttered in a voice of intense solemnity.

'I am not going to give you a story of my life,' said he, after some
time; 'I mean only to let you hear its moral. Till I was eighteen I
was taught to believe that men were honest, truthful, brave, and
affectionate; and that women were pure-hearted, gentle, forgiving, and
trustful. Before I was nineteen I knew men to be scoundrels; it took me
about a year more to think worse of the others. The