"Superb!"

"A tremendous success. Barye never did anything as fine."

"And the bust of the Nabob! What a marvellous likeness! I tell you, Constance Crenmitz is happy. See her trotting about."

"What! is that La Crenmitz, that little old woman in a fur cape? I supposed she was dead twenty years ago."

Oh! no; on the contrary, she is very much alive. Enchanted, rejuvenated by the triumph of her goddaughter, who is decidedly the success of the Exhibition, she glides through the crowd of artists and people of fashion grouped around the two points where Felicia's contributions are exhibited like two huge masses of black backs, variegated costumes, jostling and squeezing in their struggles to look. Constance, usually so retiring, makes her way into the front row, listens to the discussions, catches on the wing snatches of sentences, technical phrases which she remembers, nods her head approvingly, smiles, shrugs her shoulders when she hears any slighting remark, longing to crush the first person who should fail to admire.

Whether it be the excellent Crenmitz or another, you always see, at the opening of the Salon, that shadow prowling furtively about where people are conversing, with ears on the alert and an anxious expression; sometimes it is an old father who thanks you with a glance for a kindly word said in passing, or assumes a despairing expression at the epigram which you hurl at a work of art and which strikes a heart behind you. A face not to be omitted surely, if ever some painter in love with things modern should conceive the idea of reproducing on canvas that perfectly typical manifestation of Parisian life, the opening of the Salon in that vast hothouse of statuary, with the yellow gravelled paths and the great glass ceiling, beneath which, half-way from the floor, the galleries of the first tier stand forth, lined with heads bending over to look, and with extemporized waving draperies.

In a light that seems slightly cold and pale as it falls on the green decorations of the walls, where the rays become rarefied, one would say, in order to afford the spectators an opportunity for concentration and accuracy of vision, the crowd moves slowly back and forth, pauses, scatters over the benches, divided into groups, and yet mingling castes more thoroughly than any other gathering, just as the fickle and changing weather, at that time of year, brings together all sorts of costumes, so that the black lace and superb train of the great lady who has come to observe the effect of her own portrait rub against the Siberian furs of the actress who has just returned from Russia and proposes that everybody shall know it.

Here there are no boxes, no reserved seats, and that is what gives such abiding interest and charm to this first view in broad daylight. The real society women can pass judgment at close quarters on the painted beauties that excite so much applause by artificial light; the tiny hat, latest shape, of the Marquise de Bois-l'HÉry and her like brushes against the more than modest costume of some artist's wife or daughter, while the model who has posed for that lovely Andromeda near the entrance struts triumphantly by, dressed in a too short skirt, in wretched clothes tossed upon her beauty with the utmost lack of taste. They scrutinize one another, admire or disparage one another, exchange contemptuous, disdainful or inquisitive glances, which suddenly become fixed as some celebrity passes, the illustrious critic, for instance, whom we seem to see at this moment, serene and majestic, his powerful face framed in long hair, making the circuit of the exhibits of sculpture, followed by half a score of young disciples who hang breathlessly upon his kindly dicta. Although the sound of voices is lost in that immense vessel, which is resonant only under the two arched doorways of entrance and exit, faces assume extraordinary intensity there, a character of energy and animation especially noticeable in the vast, dark recess of the restaurant, overflowing with a gesticulating multitude, the light hats of the women and the waiters' white aprons standing out in bold relief against the background of dark clothing, and in the broad aisle in the centre, where the swarm of promenaders en vignette forms a striking contrast to the immobility of the statues, the unconscious palpitation with which their chalky whiteness and their glorified attitudes are encompassed.

There are gigantic wings spread for flight, a sphere upheld by four allegorical figures, whose attitude, as if they were twirling their burden, suggests a vague waltz measure, a marvel of equilibrium which perfectly produces the illusion of the earth's revolution; and there are arms raised as a signal, bodies of heroic size, containing an allegory, a symbol that brings death and immortality upon them, gives them to history, to legend, to the ideal world of the museums which nations visit from curiosity or admiration.

Although Felicia's bronze group had not the proportions of those productions, its exceptional merit had procured for it the honor of a position at one of the points of intersection of the aisles in the centre, from which the public was standing respectfully aloof at that moment, staring over the shoulders of the line of attendants and police officers at the Bey of Tunis and his suite, a group of long burnous, falling in sculptural folds, which made them seem like living statues confronting the dead ones. The bey, who had been in Paris for a few days, the lion of all the first nights, had expressed a desire to see the opening of the Salon. He was "an enlightened prince, a friend of the arts," who possessed a gallery of amazing Turkish pictures on the Bardo, and chromo-lithographic reproductions of all the battles of the First Empire. The great Arabian hound had caught his eye as soon as he entered the hall of sculpture. It was the slougui to the life, the genuine slender, nervous slougui of his country, the companion of all his hunts. He laughed in his black beard, felt the animal's loins, patted his muscles, seemed to be trying to rouse him, while, with dilated nostrils, protruding teeth, every limb outstretched and indefatigable in its strength and elasticity, the aristocratic beast, the beast of prey, ardent in love and in the chase, drunk with his twofold drunkenness, his eyes fixed on his victim, seemed to be already tasting the delights of his victory, with the end of his tongue hanging from his mouth, as he sharpened his teeth with a ferocious laugh. If you looked only at him, you said to yourself: "He has him!" But a glance at the fox reassured you at once. Under his lustrous, velvety coat, catlike, with his body almost touching the ground, skimming along without effort, you felt that he was in truth a wizard, and his fine head with its pointed ears, which he turned toward the hound as he ran, had an ironical expression of security which clearly indicated the gift he had received from the gods.

While an inspector of the Beaux-Arts, who had hurried to the spot, with his uniform all awry, and bald to the middle of his back, explained to Mohammed the apologue of "The Dog and the Fox," as told in the catalogue, with this moral: "Suppose that they meet," and the note: "The property of the Duc de Mora," the bulky Hemerlingue, puffing and perspiring beside his Highness, had great difficulty in persuading him that that masterly production was the work of the lovely equestrian they had met in the Bois the day before. How could a woman with a woman's weak hands so soften the hard bronze and give it the appearance of flesh? Of all the marvels of Paris that one caused the bey the most profound amazement. So he asked the official if there was nothing else of the same artist's to see.

"Yes, indeed, Monseigneur, another chef-d'oeuvre. If your Highness will come this way I will take you to it."

The bey moved on with his suite. They were all fine specimens of their race, beautifully chiselled features and pure profiles, complexions of a warm pallor of which the snowy whiteness of the haik absorbed even the reflection. Magnificently draped, they contrasted strangely with the busts which were ranged on both sides of the aisle they had taken, and which, perched on their high pedestals, exiled from their familiar surroundings, from the environment in which they would doubtless have recalled some engrossing toil, some deep affection, a busy and courageous life, seemed very forlorn in the empty air about them and presented the distressing aspect of people who had gone astray and were very much ashamed to find themselves there. Aside from two or three female figures, well-rounded shoulders enveloped in petrified lace, hair reproduced in marble with the soft touch that gives the impression of a powdered head-dress, and a few profiles of children with simple lines, in which the polish of the stone seems like the moisture of life, there were nothing but wrinkles, furrows, contortions and grimaces, our excess of toil and activity, our nervous paroxysms and our fevers contrasted with that art of repose and noble serenity.

The Nabob's ugliness, at all events, had in its favor its energy, the peculiar characteristics of the adventurer and the prolÉtaire, and that kindly expression so well rendered by the artist, who had taken pains to mix a supply of ochre with her plaster, thereby giving it almost the swarthy, sun-burned tone of the model. The Arabs, on seeing it, uttered a stifled exclamation: "Bon-SaÏd!" (the father of good-luck). It was the Nabob's sobriquet at Tunis, the label of his fortune, so to speak. The bey, for his part, thinking that someone intended to make sport of him by bringing him thus face to face with the detested mercanti, glanced suspiciously at the inspector.

"Jansoulet?" he said in his guttural voice.

"Yes, your Highness, Bernard Jansoulet, the new Deputy for Corsica."

At that the bey turned to Hemerlingue, with a frown on his face.

"Deputy?"

"Yes, Monseigneur, the news came this morning; but nothing is settled yet."

And the banker, ill at ease and lowering his voice, added: "No French Chamber would ever admit that adventurer."

No matter! the blow had been dealt at the bey's blind confidence in his baron-financier. Hemerlingue had declared so positively that the other would never be chosen, that they could act freely and without fear so far as he was concerned. And lo! instead of the crushed, discredited man, a representative of the nation towered before him, a deputy whose figure in stone Parisians thronged to admire; for, from the Oriental sovereign's standpoint, as that public exhibition necessarily involved the idea of conferring honor upon the subject, that bust had all the prestige of a statue overlooking a public square. Hemerlingue, even yellower than usual, inwardly accused himself of bungling and imprudence. But how could he have suspected such a thing? He had been assured that the bust was not finished. And, indeed, it had arrived that very morning, and seemed overjoyed to be there, quivering with gratified pride, expressing contempt for its enemies with the good-natured smile of its curling lip. A veritable silent revenge for the disaster at Saint-Romans.

For several minutes the bey, as cold and impassive as the carved image, stared at it without speaking, his forehead divided by a straight fold wherein his courtiers alone could read his wrath; then, after a few words spoken rapidly in Arabic, to order his carriages and collect his scattered suite, he strode gravely toward the exit, without deigning to look at anything else. Who can say what takes place in those august brains, surfeited with power? Even our western monarchs have incomprehensible whims; but they are as nothing beside Oriental caprices. Monsieur l'Inspecteur des Beaux-Arts, who had confidently expected to show his Highness all over the Exhibition, and to earn thereby the pretty little red and green ribbon of the Order of Nicham-Iftikhar, never knew the secret of that sudden flight.

Just as the white haiks disappeared under the porch, and just in time to catch a glimpse of the fluttering of their last folds, the Nabob entered through the centre door. That morning he had received the news: "Elected by an overwhelming majority;" and, after a sumptuous breakfast, at which many a toast had been drunk to the new Deputy for Corsica, he had come with some of his guests, to show himself, to see himself as well, and to enjoy his new glory to the full.

The first person he saw when he arrived was Felicia Ruys, leaning against the pedestal of a statue, receiving compliments and homage with which he hastened to mingle his own. She was dressed simply, in a black embroidered gown trimmed with jet, tempering the severe simplicity of her costume by its scintillating reflections and by the brilliancy of a fascinating little hat adorned with the feathers of the lophophore, whose changing colors her hair, tightly curled over the forehead and parted at the neck in broad waves, seemed to prolong and to soften.

A crowd of artists, of society folk hastened to pay their respects to so great genius allied to so great beauty; and Jenkins, bareheaded, swelling with effusive warmth, went about from one to another, extorting enthusiasm, but broadening the circle about that youthful renown, posing as both guardian and fugleman. Meanwhile, his wife was talking with the young woman. Poor Madame Jenkins! He had said to her in that brutal voice which she alone knew: "You must go and speak to Felicia." And she had obeyed, restraining her emotion; for she knew now what lay hidden beneath that fatherly affection, although she avoided any explanation with the doctor as if she were apprehensive of the result.

After Madame Jenkins, the Nabob rushed to the artist's side, and taking her slender, neatly gloved hands in his two great paws expressed his gratitude with a warmth that brought the tears to his own eyes.

"You have done me a very great honor, Mademoiselle, to associate my name with yours, my humble self with your triumph, and to prove to all these vermin who are digging their claws into me that you don't believe in all the slanderous reports that are current about me. Really, it is something I can never forget. I might cover this magnificent bust with gold and diamonds and I should still be in your debt."

Luckily for the good Nabob, who was more susceptible to emotion than eloquent, he was obliged to make room for all those who were attracted by the refulgent talent, the artistic personality before their eyes: frantic enthusiasm which, for lack of words in which to express itself, disappears as it came; worldly admiration, inspired by kindly feeling, by an earnest desire to please, but whose every word is like a cold shower-bath; and then the hearty hand-clasps of rivals, of comrades, some very frank and cordial, others which communicate to you the inertness of their pressure; the tall, conceited zany whose absurd praise ought to delight you beyond measure, and who, in order not to spoil you utterly, accompanies it with "a few trifling reservations;" and the man who, while overwhelming you with compliments, proves to you that you do not know the first word of the trade; and the other good fellow, full of business, who stops just long enough to whisper in your ear that "So-and-so, the famous critic, doesn't seem to be satisfied." Felicia listened to it all with the utmost tranquillity, being raised by her triumph above the petty slurs of envy, and glowed with pride when a renowned veteran, some old associate of her father's, tossed her a "Well done, little one!" which carried her back to the past, to the little corner that was always reserved for her in the paternal studio in the days when she was beginning to carve out a little glory for herself in the renown of the great Ruys. But as a whole the congratulations left her quite unmoved, because she missed one which was more desirable in her eyes than all the rest, and which she was surprised that she had not yet received. Clearly she thought of him more than she had ever thought of any man before. Was this love at last, the great love that is so rare in the heart of an artist, who is incapable of abandoning herself unreservedly to a sentiment, or was it simply a dream of an honest, bourgeois life, well protected against ennui, that vile ennui, the precursor of storms, which she had so much reason to dread? In any event, she suffered herself to be deceived and had been living for several days in a state of delicious unrest, for love is so strong, so beautiful, that its semblance, its mirage, takes us captive and may move us as deeply as love itself.

Has it ever happened to you, as you walked along the street, thinking intently of some absent person very dear to your heart, to be warned of his approach by meeting one or more persons who bear a vague resemblance to him, preparatory images, outline sketches of the face that is soon to rise before you, which come forth from the crowd like successive appeals to your overstrained attention? These are magnetic, nervous phenomena at which we must not smile too broadly, because they constitute a susceptibility to suffering. Several times Felicia had fancied that she recognized Paul de GÉry's curly head in the ever-moving, ever-changing flow of visitors, when suddenly she uttered a cry of pleasure. It was not he, however, but some one who much resembled him, whose regular, tranquil face was always blended now in her thoughts with that of her friend Paul, as the result of a resemblance rather moral than physical, and of the mild influence they both exerted over her mind.

"Aline!"

"Felicia!"

Although nothing is more difficult of comprehension than the friendship of two of society's queens, dividing salon royalty among themselves and lavishing flattering epithets, the petty graces of feminine effusiveness, upon each other, the friendships of childhood retain in the woman a frankness of demeanor which distinguishes them and makes them recognizable among all other friendships; bonds woven in innocence and woven firmly, like the pieces of needlework made by little girls, whereon an inexperienced hand has lavished thread and great knots; plants that have grown in virgin soil, past their bloom but deeply-rooted and full of life and vigor. And what joy to turn back a few steps, hand in hand,—boarding-school Arguses, where are you?—with equal knowledge of the road and of its slightest windings, and with the same wistful laugh. Standing a little apart, the two girls, who needed only to stand face to face to forget five years of separation, talked rapidly, recalling bygone days, while little PÈre Joyeuse, his ruddy face set off by a new cravat, drew himself up to his full height, proud beyond words that his daughter should be so warmly greeted by a celebrity. Proud he certainly had reason to be, for that little Parisian, even beside her resplendent friend, retained her full value for charm and youth and luminous innocence, beneath her twenty years, her rich, golden girlhood, which the joy of meeting caused to put forth fresh flowers.

"How happy you must be! I haven't seen anything; but I hear everybody say that it is so beautiful."

"Happy above all things to find you again, little Aline. It is such a long time—"

"I should say as much, you bad girl. Whose fault is it?"

In the saddest recess of her memory Felicia found the date of the rupture between them, coincident in her mind with another date when her youth died in a never-to-be-forgotten scene.

"What have you been doing all this time, my love?"

"Oh! always the same thing—nothing worth talking about."

"Yes, yes, we know what you call doing nothing, little brave heart. It is giving your life to others, is it not?"

But Aline was no longer listening. She was smiling affectionately at a point straight before her, and Felicia, turning to see to whom that smile was addressed, saw Paul de GÉry replying to Mademoiselle Joyeuse's shy and blushing salutation.

"Do you know each other, pray?"

"Do I know Monsieur Paul! I should think so. We talk of you often enough. Has he never told you?"

"Never. He is terribly sly—"

She stopped abruptly as a light flashed through her mind; and, paying no heed to de GÉry, who came forward to do homage to her triumph, she leaned hastily toward Aline and whispered to her. The other blushed, protested with smiles, with inaudible words: "How can you imagine such a thing? At my age. A grandmamma!" And at last she grasped her father's arm to escape that friendly raillery.

When Felicia saw the two young people walk away side by side, when she realized—what they themselves did not yet know—that they loved each other, she felt as if everything about her were crumbling. And when her dream lay at her feet, in a thousand fragments, she began to stamp upon it in a rage. After all, he was quite right to prefer that little Aline to her. Would a respectable man ever dare to marry Mademoiselle Ruys? She with a home of her own, a family, nonsense! You are a strumpet's daughter, my dear; you must be a strumpet yourself, if you wish to be anything.

The day was drawing near its close. The crowd, moving more rapidly than before, with gaps here and there, was beginning to stream toward the exit, after eddying violently around the success of the year, surfeited, a little weary, but still excited by the artistic electricity with which the atmosphere was charged. A great ray of sunlight, the sunlight of four o'clock in the afternoon, illuminated the rosework of the windows, cast upon the gravelled paths rainbow-like beams that crept gently up the bronze or marble of the statues, suffusing a lovely nude body with bright colors and giving to the vast museum something of the aspect of a garden. Felicia, absorbed in her profound, melancholy reverie, did not see the man who came toward her, superb, refined, fascinating, through the throng of visitors, who respectfully opened a passage for him, while the name of "Mora" was whispered on every side.

"Well, well, Mademoiselle, this is a grand triumph. I regret only one thing, that is the unpleasant symbolism that you have concealed in your masterpiece."

When she saw the duke standing before her, she shuddered.

"Ah! yes, the symbolism," she said, looking up at him with a disheartened smile; and, leaning against the pedestal of the great, voluptuous statue, near which they happened to be standing, with her eyes closed, like a woman who gives herself voluntarily or surrenders, she murmured in a low, very low voice:

"Rabelais lied, as all men lie. The real truth is that the fox can go no farther, that he is at the end of his breath and his courage, ready to fall into the ditch, and if the hound persists in his pursuit—"

Mora started, became a little paler, as all the blood in his veins rushed back to his heart. Two darkly flashing glances met, two words were swiftly exchanged with the ends of the lips; then the duke bowed low and walked away with a step as brisk and light as if the gods were carrying him.

There was only one man in the palace as happy as he at that moment, and that was the Nabob. Escorted by his friends, he occupied, filled the main aisle all by himself, talking in a loud tone, gesticulating, so proud that he seemed almost handsome, as if, by dint of gazing long at his bust in artless admiration, he had caught a little of the splendid idealization with which the artist had softened the vulgarity of the type. The head at an elevation of three-fourths, free from the high rolling collar, gave rise to contradictory opinions from the spectators concerning the resemblance; and Jansoulet's name, which had been repeated so many times by the electoral urns, was echoed by the prettiest lips in Paris, by its most influential voices. Any other than the Nabob would have been embarrassed by hearing as he passed the exclamations of these curious bystanders, who were not always in sympathy with him. But the platform and the springboard were congenial to that nature, which was always braver under the fire of staring eyes, like those women who are beautiful and clever only in society, and whom the slightest admiration transfigures and perfects.

When he felt that that delirious joy was subsiding, when he thought that he had drained the cup of his proud intoxication, he had only to say to himself: "Deputy! I am a deputy!" and the triumphal cup was brimming full once more. It meant the raising of the embargo from all his property, the awakening from a nightmare of two months' duration, the blast of the mistral sweeping away all vexations, all anxieties, even to the insult at Saint-Romans, heavily as it weighed on his memory.

Deputy!

He laughed all by himself as he thought of the baron's face when he heard the news, of the bey's stupefaction when he was taken to look at his bust; and suddenly, at the thought that he was no longer a mere adventurer gorged with gold, arousing the senseless admiration of the vulgar like an enormous nugget in a money-changer's window, but that he was entitled to be looked upon as one of the chosen exponents of the national will, his good-natured, mobile face assumed an expression of ponderous gravity suited to the occasion, his mind was filled with plans for the future, for reform, and the longing to profit by the lessons he had lately learned from destiny. Already, mindful of the promise he had made de GÉry, he exhibited a certain contemptuous coldness for the hungry herd that fawned servilely about his heels, and seemed to have adopted deliberately a system of peremptory contradiction. He called the Marquis de Bois-l'HÉry "my good fellow," sharply imposed silence on the Governor, whose enthusiasm was becoming scandalous, and was inwardly making a solemn vow that he would rid himself as speedily as possible of all that begging, compromising horde of bohemians, when an excellent opportunity presented itself for him to begin to put his purpose in execution. MoËssard, the handsome MoËssard, in a sky-blue cravat, pale and puffed-up like a white abscess, his bust confined in a tight frock coat, seeing that the Nabob, after making the circuit of the hall of sculpture a score of times, was walking toward the exit, forced his way through the crowd, sprang to his side and said, as he passed his arm through Jansoulet's:

"You are to take me with you, you know—"

Of late, especially during the period of the election, he had assumed an authority on Place VendÔme almost equal to Monpavon's, but more impudent; for, in respect of impudence, the queen's lover had not his equal on the sidewalk that extends from Rue Drouot to the Madeleine. But on this occasion he had a bad fall. The muscular arm that he grasped violently shook itself free, and the Nabob answered him very shortly:

"I am very sorry, my dear fellow, but I have no seat to offer you."

No seat, in a carriage as big as a house, which had often held five of them!

MoËssard gazed at him in utter stupefaction.

"But I had something very urgent to say to you. On the subject of my little note. You received it, did you not?"

"To be sure, and Monsieur de GÉry should have answered it this morning. What you ask is impossible. Twenty thousand francs!—tonnerre de Dieu! how fast you go."

"It seems to me, however, that my services—" stammered the fop.

"Have been handsomely paid. So it seems to me too. Two hundred thousand francs in five months! We will stop at that, if you please. You have long teeth, young man; we must file them a bit."

They exchanged these words as they walked along, pushed by the crowd which flocked like sheep through the door of exit. MoËssard stopped:

"That is your last word?"

The Nabob hesitated a second, seized by a presentiment of evil at sight of that pale, wicked mouth; then he remembered the promise he had given his friend.

"That is my last word."

"Very well, we will see," said Beau MoËssard, while his cane cleft the air with a noise like a snake's hiss; and, turning on his heel, he strode rapidly away like a man who has very important business awaiting him.

Jansoulet continued his triumphal march. On that day it would have required something much more serious to disturb the equilibrium of his happiness; on the other hand he felt encouraged by the beginning so successfully accomplished.

The great vestibule was filled with a compact crowd, whom the approach of the hour for closing impelled toward the outer world, but whom one of the sudden downpours which seem an essential part of the opening of the Salon detained under the porch with its floor of hard-trodden gravel, like the entrance to the Circus where the lady-killers disport themselves. It was a curious, thoroughly Parisian spectacle.

Outside, the sunbeams shining through the rain, attaching to its limpid threads those sharp, brilliant blades of light which justify the proverb "It rains halberds;" the young verdure of the Champs-ÉlysÉes, the clumps of dripping, rustling rhododendrons, the carriages drawn up in line on the avenue, the oilcloth capes of the coachmen, all the splendid accoutrements of the horses to which the water and the sunbeams imparted vastly greater richness and effect, and everywhere a gleam of blue, the blue of the sky, smiling in the interval between two showers.

Within, laughter, idle chatter, salutations, impatience, skirts turned up, satins puffing vaingloriously over the narrow pleats of petticoats and delicately striped silk stockings, oceans of fringe, of lace, of flounces, held with one hand in too heavy bundles, and torn beyond recognition. Then, to connect the two sides of the picture, the prisoners framed by the arched doorway and standing in its dark shadow, with the vast background of light behind them, footmen running about under umbrellas, shouting names of coachmen and names of masters, and coupÉs slowly approaching, into which terrified couples hastily jump.

"Monsieur Jansoulet's carriage!"

Everybody turned to look, but we know that that disturbed him but little. And while the honest Nabob posed for a moment, awaiting his people, amid those fashionable women, those famous men, that assorted gathering of all Paris which was present there with a name to fit each of its figures, a slender, neatly-gloved hand was held out to him, and the Duc de Mora, who was about to enter his coupÉ, said to him as he passed, with the effusiveness that happiness gives to the most reserved of men:

"My congratulations, my dear deputy."

It was said aloud, and every one could hear,—"My dear deputy."

There is in the life of every man a golden hour, a luminous mountain-top where all that he can hope for of prosperity, of joy, of triumph, awaits him and is showered upon him. The mountain is more or less high, more or less precipitous and difficult to climb; but it exists equally for all, for the most powerful and the humblest. But, like the longest day of the year, when the sun has reached the end of his upward journey and the next day seems a first step toward winter, that summum bonum of human existence is but a moment to be enjoyed, after which we have no choice but to descend. Poor man! you must remember that late afternoon in May, that time of alternating rain and sunshine, you must fix its changing splendor forever in your memory. It was the hour of your midsummer, when the flowers were blooming, the branches bending beneath their weight of golden fruit, and the crops whose gleanings you so recklessly threw aside, were fully ripe. The star will fade now, gradually receding and descending, and soon will be incapable of piercing the woeful darkness wherein your destiny is about to be fulfilled.