ad, mingled with the terrible realities he had
gone through; and there were many of his mere fancies that engaged
his credulity more powerfully than some of the actual events of his
chequered life.

His convalescence was passed at the Cardinal's villa of Orvieto; and if
anything could have added to the strange confusion which oppressed him,
it was the curious indistinct impression his mind preserved of the place
itself. The gardens, fountains, statues, were all familiar. How had they
been so revealed to him? As he strolled through the great rooms, objects
struck him as well known; and yet, the Pere Massoni had said to
him: 'Orvieto will interest you; you have never been there'; and his
Eminence, in his invitation, suggested the same thought. Day after day
he pondered over this difficulty, and he continually turned over in his
mind this question: 'Is there some inner picture in my being of all that
I am to meet with in life? Has existence only to unroll a tableau, every
detail of which is graven on my heart? Have other men these conflicts
within their minds? Is it that by some morbid condition of memory _I_ am
thus tortured? and must I seek relief by trying to forget?' The struggle
thus suggested, rendered him daily more taciturn and thoughtful. He
would sit for hours long without a word; and time glided on absolutely
as though in a sleep.

If Gerald's life was passed in this inactivity, the Pere Massoni's days
were fully occupied. From Ireland the tidings had long been of the most
discouraging kind. The great cause which should have been confided to
the guidance of the Church, and such as the Church could have trusted,
had been shamefully betrayed into the hands of a party deeply imbued
with all the principles of the French Revolution; men taught in the
infamous doctrines of Voltaire and Volney, and who openly professed to
hate a church even more than a monarchy. How the North of Ireland had
taken the lead in insurrection--how the Presbyterians, sworn enemies
as they were to Catholicism, had enrolled themselves in the cause of
revolt--how all the ready, active and zealous leaders were among that
class and creed, the Priest Carrol had not failed to write him word; nor
did it need the priest's suggestive comments to make the clever
Jesuit aware of all the peril that this portended. Was it too late to
counteract these evils? by what means could men be brought back from the
fatal infatuation of those terrible doctrines? ho