gh-hearted ambition
would move him--some chivalrous desire for great things--so surely would
come back the terrible lesson of Mirabeau to his mind, and distrust
darken, with its ill-omened frown, all that had seemed bright and
glorious.

After the first burst of proud elation on discovering his birth and
lineage, he became thoughtful and serious, and at times sad. He dwelt
frequently and painfully upon the injustice with which his early
youth was treated, and seemed fully to feel that, if some political
necessity--of what kind he could not guess--had not rendered the
acknowledgment convenient, his claims might still have slept on,
unrecognised and unknown. Among his first lessons in life Mirabeau had
instilled into him a haughty defiance of all who would endeavour to use
him as a tool.

'Remember,' he would say, 'that the men who achieve success in life the
oftenest, are they who trade upon the faculties of others. Beware of
these men; for their friendship is nothing less than a servitude.'

'To what end, for what object, am I now withdrawn from obscurity?' were
his constant questions to himself. The priest and his craft were objects
of his greatest suspicion, and the thought of being a mere instrument to
their ends was a downright outrage. In this way, Massoni was regarded
by him with intense distrust; nor could even his gratitude surmount the
dread he felt for the Jesuit father. These sentiments deepened, as he
lay, hours long, awake at night till, at length, a low fever seized him,
and long intervals of dreary incoherency would break the tenor of his
sounder thoughts. It had been deemed expedient by the Cardinal York and
his other friends that young Gerald should continue to reside at the
Jesuit College till some definite steps were taken to declare his rank
to the world, and the very delay in this announcement was another reason
of suspicion.

'If I be the prince you call me, why am I detained in this imprisonment?
Why am I not among my equals; why not confronted with some future that
I can look boldly in the face? Would they make a priest of me, as they
have done with my uncle? Where are the noble-hearted followers who
rallied around my father? Where the brave adherents who never deserted
even his exile? Are they all gone, or have they died, and, if so, is not
the cause itself dead?'

These and suchlike were the harassing doubts that troubled him, until
eventually his mind balanced between a morbid irritabili