‘Do not take that sword, Gerald,’ said she, trying to take the weapon from him. ‘If you enter a village with a rapier at your side, they ‘ll call you a brigand, and give you up to the carabinieri.’
‘I’ll not quit the good blade so long as I can wear it,’ said he resolutely; and then added to himself, ‘I am nobly born, and have a right to a sword. “Cinctus gladio,” says the old statute of knighthood; and if I be a Géraldine, I am noble!’
And with these words the boy bade his last farewell, and issued from the house.
CHAPTER XII. A FOREST SCENE
Once more did Gerald find himself alone and penniless upon the world. He was not, however, as when first he issued forth, timid, depressed, and diffident. Short as had been the interval since that time, his mind had made a considerable progress. His various readings had taught him much; and he had already learned that in the Mutual Assurance Company we call Life men are ever more or less dependent on their fellows. ‘There must, then,’ said he to himself, ‘be surely some craft or calling to which I can bring skill or aptitude, and some one or other will certainly accept of services that only require the very humblest recognition.’ He walked for hours without seeing a living thing: the barren mountain had not even a sheep-walk; and save the path worn by the track of smugglers, there was nothing to show that the foot of man had ever traversed its dreary solitudes. At last he gained the summit of the ridge, and could see the long line of coast to the westward, jagged and indented with many a bay and promontory. There lay St. Stephano: he could recognise it by the light cloud of pale blue smoke that floated over the valley, and marked where the town stood; and, beyond, he could catch the masts and yards of a few small craft that were sheltering in the offing. Beyond these again stretched the wide blue sea, marked at the horizon by some far-away sails. The whole was wrapped in that solemn calm, so striking in the noon of an Italian summer’s day. Not a cloud moved, not a leaf was stirring; a faint foam-line on the beach told that there the waves crept softly in, but, except this, all nature was at rest.
In the dead stillness of night our thoughts turn inward, and we mingle memories with our present reveries; but in the stillness of noonday, when great shadows lie motionless on the hillside, and all is hushed save the low murmur of the laden bee, our minds take the wide range of the world—visiting many lands—mingling with strange people. Action, rather than reflection, engages us; and we combine, and change, and fashion the mighty elements before us as we will. We people the plains with armed hosts; we fill the towns with busy multitudes—gay processions throng the squares, and banners wave from steeple and tower; over the blue sea proud fleets are seen to move, and thundering echoes send back their dread cannonading: and through these sights and sounds we have our especial part—lending our sympathies here, bearing our warmest wishes there. If we dream, it is of the real, the actual, and the true; and thus dreaming, we are but foreshadowing to ourselves the incidents and accidents of life, and garnering up the resources wherewith to meet them.
Stored as was his mind with recent reading, Gerald’s fancy supplied him with innumerable incidents, in every one of which he displayed the same heroic traits, the same aptitude to meet emergency, and the same high-hearted courage he had admired in others. Vain-gloriousness may be forgiven when it springs, as his did, out of thorough ignorance of the world. It is, indeed, but the warm outpouring of a generous temperament, where self-esteem predominates. The youth ardently desired that the good should prosper and the bad be punished: his only mistake was, that he claimed the chief place in effecting both one and the other.
Eagerly bent upon adventure, no matter where, how, or with whom, he stood on the mountain’s peak, gazing at the scene beneath him. A waving tract of country, traversed by small streams, stretched away toward Tuscany, but where the boundary lay between the states he could not detect. No town or village could be descried; and, so far as he could see, miles and miles of journey yet lay before him ere he could arrive at a human dwelling. This was indeed the less matter, since Tina had fastened up in his handkerchief sufficient food for the day; and even were night to overtake him, there was no great hardship in passing it beneath that starry sky.
‘Many there must be,’ thought he, ‘campaigning at this very hour, in far-away lands, mayhap amid the sand deserts of the East, or crouching beneath the shelter of the drifted snows in the North; and even here are troops of gypsies, who never know what means the comfort of a roof over them.’ Just as he said these words to himself, his eyes chanced to rest upon a thin line of pale blue smoke that arose from a group of alders beside a stream in the valley. Faint and thin at first, it gradually grew darker and fuller, till it rose into the clear air, and was wafted slowly along toward the sea.