track:

'"The sport the gods delight in
Makes mortals grieve below."'

'It was Fabri wrote that line,' said Gerald, catching at the quotation.

'Yes, Madame la Marquise,' said Alfieri, answering the quickly darted
glances of the lady's eyes, 'this youth has read all sorts of authors.
A certain Signor Gabriel, with whom he sojourned months long in the
Maremma, introduced him to Voltaire, Diderot, and Rousseau: his own
discursive tastes added others to the list.'

'Gabriel! Gabriel! It could not be that it was----' and here she bent
over and whispered a word in Alfieri's ear.

A sudden start and an exclamation of surprise burst from the poet.

'Tell us what your friend Gabriel was like.'

'I can tell you how he described himself,' said Gerald. 'He said he was:

"Un sanglier marque de petite verole."'

'Oh, then, it was he!' exclaimed the Marquise. 'Tell us, I pray you, how
fortune came to play you so heartless a trick as to make you this man's
friend?'

Half reluctantly, almost resentfully, Gerald replied to this question by
relating the incidents that had befallen him in the Maremma, and how
he had subsequently lived for months the companion of this strange
associate.

'What marvellous lessons of evil, boy, has he not instilled into
you! Tell me frankly, has he not made you suspectful of every
one--distrusting all friendship, disowning all obligations, making
affection seem a mockery, and woman a cheat?'

'I have heard good and bad from his lips. If he spoke hastily of the
world at times, mayhap it had not treated him with too much kindness.
Indeed he said as much to me, and that it was not his fault that he
thought so meanly of mankind.'

'What poison this to pour into a young heart!' broke in Alfieri. 'The
cattle upon the thousand hills eat not of noxious herbage; their better
instincts protect them, even where seductive fruits and flowers woo
their tastes. It is man alone is beguiled by false appearances, and this
out of the very subtlety of his own nature. The plague-spot of the heart
is distrust!'

'These are better teachings, boy, than Signor Gabriel's,' said the lady.

'You know him, then?' asked Gerald.

'I have little doubt that we are speaking of the same person; and if so,
not I alone, but all Europe knows him.'

Gerald burned to inquire further, to know who and what this mysterious
man was, how he had earned the terrible reputation that attended him,
and what charges were