seed we throw upon it. How many date the habits of
concentration, by which they have won success in after-life, to the
thoughtful hours of a convalescence. It is not merely that isolation
and quiet have aided their minds; there is much more in the fact that at
such times the heart and the brain work together. Every appeal to reason
must be confirmed by a judgment in the higher court of the affections,
and out of our emotions as much as out of our convictions do we bend
ourselves to believe.

How fresh and invigorated do we come forth from these intervals of
peace! less confident, it may be, of ourselves, but far more trustful of
others--better pleased with life, and more sanguine of our fellow-men.
And no matter how often we may be deceived or disappointed, no matter
how frequently our warmest affections have met no requital, let us
cherish this hopeful spirit to the last--let us guard ourselves against
doubting! There is no such bankruptcy of the heart as distrust.

Gerald was for weeks long a sufferer on a sick-bed. In a small room of
the villa, kindly cared for, all his wants supplied by the directions of
his wealthy friends, there he lay, pondering over the wayward accident
of his life, and insensibly feeding his heart with the conviction that
Fate, which had never failed to befriend him in difficulty, had yet some
worthy destiny in store for him. He read unceasingly, and of everything.
The Marquise constantly sent him her books, and what now interested him
no less, the newspapers and pamphlets of the time. It was the first real
glimpse he had obtained of the actual world about him; and with avidity
he read of the ambitions and rivalries which disturbed Europe--the
pretensions of this State, the fears and jealousies of that. Stored as
his mind was with poetic images, imbued with a rapturous love for the
glowing pictures thus presented, he yet hesitated to decide whether the
life of action was not a higher and nobler ambition than the wondrous
dreamland of imagination.

In the convent Gerald's mind had received its first lessons of religion
and morality. His sojourn at the Tana had imparted his earliest advances
into the world of knowledge through books, and now his captivity at
the 'Camerotto' opened to him a glance of the real world, its stirring
scenes, its deep intrigues, and all the incidents of that stormy sea
on which men charter the vessels of their hope. Was it that he forgot
Marietta? Had pain and suffer