None told me I was of royal blood
and had a throne for a heritage. These tidings break on me as I am
worn down by misfortune and broken by illness, so that my shattered
intellects scarcely credit them. Even now, on what, or on whom, do I
rely? Has not disease undermined my strength and distrust my judgment,
so that I believe in nothing, nor in anybody? Ah, Riquetti, _your_
poisons never leave the blood till it has ceased to circulate.'

There were days when the whole plan and scheme of his life seemed to him
such a mockery and a deception that he felt a sort of scorn for himself
in believing it. It was like childhood or dotage to his mind this dream
of a greatness so far off, so impossible, and he burned for some real
actual existence with truthful incidents and interests. Gloomy doubts
would also cross him, whether he might be nothing but a mere tool in the
hands of certain crafty men like Massoni, who having used him for their
purpose to-day would cast him off as worthless to-morrow. These thoughts
became at times almost insupportable, and his only relief against them
was in great bodily fatigue. It was his habit, when in this mood,
to mount his horse and ride into the forest. The deep pine-wood was
traversed in various directions by long grassy alleys, miles in extent;
and here, save at the very rarest intervals, no one was to be met with.
It is not easy to conceive anything more solemn and gloomy than one of
these forests, where the only sound is a low, sighing cadence as the
wind stirs in the pine-tops. A solitary blackbird, perchance, may warble
his mellow song in the stillness, or, as evening closes, the wailing cry
of the owl be heard; otherwise the stillness is deathlike.

Whole days had Gerald often passed in these leafy solitudes, till at
length he grew to recognise even in that apparent uniformity certain
spots and certain trees by which he could calculate his distance from
home. Two or three little clearings there were also where trees had been
felled and small piles of brushwood were formed; these were his most
remote wanderings and marked the place whence he turned his steps
homeward.

On the morning we now speak of he rode at such reckless speed that in
less than two hours he had left these familiar places far behind and
penetrated deeper into the dense wood. Toward noon he dismounted to
relieve his somewhat wearied horse, and walked along for hours, a
strange feeling of pleasure stirring his heart at