yard.'

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
noble, but his want and destitution 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 passionately 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 w