“Un sanglier marqué de petite vérole.”’
‘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 alleged against him. He could not dare, however, to put questions in such a presence, and he sat moodily thinking over the issue.