DON MARCOS is descending the slopes of the public gardens toward the Casino Square, in conversation with a soldier.

He is no longer the ceremonious Colonel who used to kiss the hands of the elderly and noble ladies in the gambling rooms, and was present as the inevitable guest at the luncheons of all the titled families stopping at the HÔtel de Paris. There is nothing about his person to recall the long velvet lined frock coats, the high white silk hats, and the other splendors of his eccentric elegance. He is soberly dressed in a dark suit, and there is something rustic about his appearance, which reveals the man who lives in the country, enjoys cultivating the soil, and feels constraint on returning to city life. He is wearing gloves, just as in the good old days; but now it is out of necessity. His hands remind him of a certain narrow garden around his diminutive villa, with five trees, twelve rose bushes, and some forty shrubs all of which he knows individually, by names he has given them. He has been caring for them so fondly, and caressing them so often, that his fingers have become calloused.

The soldier is also walking along like a country man, looking with curiosity in every direction. A stiff mustache covers his upper lip, one of those stiff and aggressive mustaches which come out after long periods of continual shaving. His uniform is old, faded by the sun and rain. The yellowish cloth has the neutral color of the soil. His right arm hangs inert from the shoulder and moves in rhythm with his step, like a dangling inanimate object. His hand is covered with a glove, the rigidity of which reveals the outline of something hard and mechanical. The other hand leans on a knotty cane, and smoke is curling from a pipe in his lips. On his sleeves, almost mingling with the color of the cloth, is the one narrow officer's stripe.

"It has been ten months and twenty days, since your Highness left here. How many things have happened!"

The soldier is Prince Lubimoff; but Lubimoff seems stronger, more serene and decided than the preceding year, in spite of his artificial arm. There are the same gray hairs, scattered here and there, on his head; but his mustache, on being allowed to grow, has come out almost white.

The Colonel's side whiskers are like his mustache. With the disappearance of his elegance, the touches of the toilet table have likewise ceased, and the modest gray, obtained by careful dying, has given place to the white of frank old age.

Don Marcos points to the Square toward which they are both going.

"If your Highness had only seen it the night of the Armistice!"

The news of the triumph made every one come running. They descended from Beausoleil, they came up from La Condamine, and they arrived from the rock of Monaco. For the first time in four years, the faÇades of the Casino, the hotels and cafÉs, were illuminated from top to bottom.

The Square was overflowing with people. They all seemed to blink as though dazzled by the light, after the long darkness in which the submarine menace had kept them plunged. Several brass instruments roared out the Marseillaise, and the crowd following the flags of the Allied countries and, unwilling to leave the Square, kept marching about the "Camembert," like moths about a flame.

Suddenly a long dancing line formed, a farandole, and it began to run and leap, growing at each twist and turn. Every one, in the contagion of enthusiasm, joined out; officers grasped hands with privates; solemn ladies kicked up their heels and lost their hats; timid girls shouted, with their hair flying; the faces of the women had the look of enthusiastic madness which is seen only in times of revolution. The lame hopped and skipped, the blind imagined they could see, and those who had lost their hands held on with their stumps to the serpentine line. The Marseillaise seemed like a miraculous hymn, giving every one new strength. Peace!... Peace!

In one of its evolutions, the head of the human snake climbed the steps of the Casino. The farandole was trying to enter the antechamber, and the gambling rooms, to wrap its coils about the crowd, the croupiers, and the tables. Every selfish activity should cease in that hour of generous joy.

"Alas, the gamblers! What a malady gambling is, Your Highness! On reaching the Square they took off their hats to the flags, and almost wept, as they sang a verse of the Marseillaise. 'Long live France! Long live the Allies!' And immediately they entered the Casino to bet their money on the same number as the celebrated date, or on other combinations suggested by peace."

The gate-keepers, with the air of old gendarmes, concentrated in a heroic body to keep off with their breasts, their bellies and their fists the turbulent snake dance which was trying to enter the sacred edifice. They seemed indignant. When had such extraordinary insolence ever been seen? Peace was a good thing, and people might well rejoice; but to come into the Casino like a dancing riot, to interrupt the functioning of an honorable industry!... And they had finally shoved the line of disheveled women down the steps, and the decorated soldiers who were suddenly forgetting their infirmities and their wounds were driven after it.

The Prince and Toledo arrive at the Square and turn to the left of the Casino, toward the CafÉ de Paris.

Lubimoff sits down at a table, at a protruding angle of the sidewalk cafÉ which people nickname "The Promontory." The Colonel remains on his right. He has spent the afternoon with the Prince, and must return home. He is no longer so free as before; some one is living with him, and his new situation imposes unavoidable obligations.

In his mind's eye he can see, on the heights of Beausoleil, the little house he lives in, surrounded by its little garden. It is all his by registered public deed. But the fate of his property does not worry the Colonel; no one will carry off his walls and trees. What makes him nervous is a certain non-commissioned American officer, young and well built, who has a mania for walking about the dwelling; and certain bright eyes which from a window follow the soldier with a hungry look; and certain lips red as cherries, that smile at that American; and certain hands which Don Marcos thinks he has surprised from a distance throwing down a flower, though their owner shrieks at him in fury every day to convince him that he has been imagining things.

Don Marcos is married. A few weeks after the departure of the Prince, a great change came into his life. Villa Sirena already belonged to the nouveau-riche who was a maker of auto trucks and aeroplanes, and who had also bought the Paris residence. The Colonel on giving him possession, remembered only to praise the merits of the gardener and his family.

Lubimoff, before leaving for the front, had arranged for his "chamberlain's" future, assuring him a pension of ten thousand francs a year, and also sending him a certain sum with which to buy a house. Since the Colonel had set his mind on dying in Monte Carlo, he ought to have a little Villa Sirena of his own.

After digging in the garden on his property for a short time, with an occasional glance down on the Casino Square, Toledo went in search of Novoa. The Professor was his best friend; besides, he was a Spaniard, and it was the latter's duty to be of service to him, in the most important event in his life. He needed a best man for his wedding. The Professor was dumbfounded on being informed that the Colonel was going to marry the gardener's daughter. She was young enough to be his grandchild! It was tempting fate for a man of his years to expose himself deliberately to such dangers.

"You, Don Marcos, as a Spaniard, must remember," said Novoa, "that the Saint whose name you bear has a bull with long horns for his emblem! Besides, youth has its rights."

"And old age its duties," replied the Colonel, with a kindly air, resigning himself to his future.

At present, standing beside the Prince, he stammers with timidity and embarrassment. He hates to confess that he must desert him.

"Mado is waiting for me: you see, the poor girl doesn't go out very much. She likes to have me take her to the afternoon concerts on the terraces. It is five o'clock."

And when the Prince assents, with a slight nod, Toledo rushes off precipitously. Then, farther on, he begins almost to run up the slope, panting, but without feeling his weariness. He wants to reach home as soon as possible, and yet is afraid of doing so. He is sure of Mado only when he is within range of her shrieks. He shudders when he thinks that he may be "imagining things" again.

As the Prince remains alone, the glass that is before his eyes gradually fades away and with it the adjoining tables, and the people seated around the "Camembert." His vision contracts, and buries itself deep within his mind to contemplate other images of memory.

He arrived in Monte Carlo that morning. Only a few hours have passed, and he has seen so much already!

He recalls certain remarks of his friend Lewis; and remarks, made during one of the luncheons at Villa Sirena: "Life is strange and uneven as it flows along. Time goes by without anything extraordinary arising, and then, all of a sudden, hours do the work of months, days are as eventful as years, and things happen in a few moments which, at other times, would take centuries." How many people have died in the relatively short space of time that has elapsed since he last left Monte Carlo!

Lubimoff recalls the brief and exciting period after his arrival in Paris: his enlistment in the Foreign Legion; the Commission of Second Lieutenant granted him in recognition of his former service as Captain in the Imperial Guards; his departure for the front, after distributing or investing the million and a half derived from the sale of Villa Sirena, his hard life in action, the battles and slaughter accompanying, with gruesome prodigality, the advances of the triumphant offensive. He recalls his meeting with a member of the Legion who suddenly called to him and whom he had some difficulty in recognizing: Atilio Castro! Castro had changed. His ironical smile had vanished. He looked on life with greater seriousness, and now seemed convinced of the worth of his actions. They belonged to different battalions, and they did not see each other again, till late one afternoon, after a fight, he came across him. The poor boy was lying stretched out on the ground, among other corpses. His forehead had been crushed in and his brain was showing under the wound! On that face the death grin was a smile of serenity. Poor Castro! What could have become of DoÑa Clorinda?

The Prince's mind wanders from that memory. Other lost friends claim his attention. He evokes finally a more recent vision: his arrival after a long convalescence in a hospital, in Monte Carlo. On getting out of the train, Toledo deeply moved, gazes at his artificial arm, which hides but imperfectly the amputation. He had suffered for several months from the consequences of a stupid, accidental wound, received ingloriously a few days before the armistice.

He ascends the slope to the delightful little home of Don Marcos, which will be his own while he remains here. Down below, projecting into the sea, the promontory of Villa Sirena meets his eye. It now belongs to another man, and he turns his glance away to keep certain memories from welling up. In doing so his eyes chance to meet the eyes of Mado, Toledo's seÑora; eyes which doubtless consider Prince Lubimoff more interesting, with his mustache, his elderly appearance, and his uniform, than when he was the elegant master of her parents. Poor Colonel! And Michael flees the tempting glance, and the full scarlet lips, which seem to challenge him to smile.

After lunch he follows a path which zigzags up the mountain; he sees a stone wall, passes through a door, and briefly contemplates a monument surmounted by a huge rooster.

Toledo bares his head. Peace to the heroes! Then he points to the entrance of the funereal structure.

"Poor Martinez is there."

They descend several steps to another part of the cemetery, lying in terraces on the mountain slope. On that level plot the tombs are leveled off even with the soil, with slabs of stone protected by low rectangular fences of chain, or simply bordered with flowers. An Æsthetic instinct seems to explain the sparing use of ornaments here. From these mournful esplanades of death one can see a great expanse of green coast, dotted with the white of villas and towns; the rose-colored Alps, the capes of purple rock, the deep intense blue of the Mediterranean, and the soft limpid blue of a cloudless sky. And the graves seem to smile at all this splendor of Nature.

The Colonel searches among them, reading the names.

"Here, Marquis."

He points to a slab with a simple inscription: "Mary Lewis."

"Just like a bird, your Highness. One morning at dawn they found her poor little body dead on the hospital cot. She hadn't cried out, she hadn't complained; she departed as she had lived. The nurses say that the face was smiling. Her body was as light as a feather."

Around the tomb several wreaths were turning black, as though scorched by fire. Toledo seeks among these offerings of the dead woman's companions, until he points to a handful of fresh roses, which are beginning to decay.

"They must be from Lord Lewis," he goes on to say. "When things go badly in the Casino, he comes up to see his niece. Your Highness must know, of course, that with the death of Lady Lewis, he is now a Lord—really a Lord."

The Prince shrugs his shoulders. To think of human vanities in a place like this, which makes all earthly worries seem grotesque!

Don Marcos guesses his impatience, and as they descend two more terraces, he goes on explaining.

"The English woman died before the other; that is why they buried her farther up. So many people have died in the last few months!"

They reach the last terrace of the cemetery, the lowest one, a square field of reddish earth in which there are no slabs, no truncated columns, and no fences of chain. Little mounds of earth taking the form of a coffin indicate the location of the graves. Some of them have wooden crosses. From one of the latter hangs the picture of a young soldier in the center of a wreath laid there by his parents.

Two men show their heads and shoulders above the ground and disappear from sight again after emptying their shovels. They are opening a grave for some one who is soon to come. Michael notices floating up from the vibrant, luminous air, the mournful sound of a bell, tolling in an unseen church below.

The Colonel insists on explaining.

"It is a temporary grave, without any slab, without any name."

On account of the war, it was impossible to send the body to Paris. It will lie here the length of time the law demands, and then the young lady, who is her heir, will have her taken to the vault in the Passy Cemetery where her mother is buried. He hesitates somewhat as he examines the mounds, and finally stops in front of one of them, and takes off his hat.

"Here it is."

Lubimoff cannot hide his surprise. "Here?..." He sees a heap of earth, without anything to adorn it, without anything to differentiate it from the rest, and which inspires in him no emotion at all. He looks anxiously at his companion. Hasn't he made a mistake? Are they not standing beside the tomb of some poor soldier who died of his wounds?

The Colonel, somewhat offended by the question, repeats energetically: "Here it is." He remembers that he was the only man present at the funeral. Three nurses, SeÑorita Valeria, and he, followed the coffin to these heights; there was no one else.

Poor Duchess de Delille! Toledo is moved on remembering her unexpected death. Lady Lewis had sent her to the front. Having been born in the United States, it was fairly easy for her to be admitted to a hospital unit with the American Divisions that were fighting at ChÂteau-Thierry.

The Prince, listening to the explanations of Don Marcos, recalls a confession Alicia once made to him. Her hands were clumsy. Her spirit, anxious to do good, weakened at the moment of action through a lack of material training. Doubtless for that reason she had been sent back a few weeks later to the Riviera, to give her services in a quieter hospital than the ambulance stations at the front.

Toledo had not seen her. She was living in the neighborhood of Monte Carlo without his ever suspecting it. The first news he had had of her was that of her death; a death which leaves the Colonel pensive whenever he recalls it. She became infected by a surgical instrument which had just been used in an operation. Perhaps it was because of the clumsiness of her hands; perhaps ... who knows! Don Marcos believes that the Duchess was tired of life.

"A horrible death, Marquis. I did not see her: I am glad I didn't. They tell me she was black and swollen. Besides, for several hours she was in torture, lifting herself on her head and heels, arching above the bed, with the muscles of her body tense with the most atrocious suffering. Tetanus! How terrible for a great lady, so beautiful, so elegant to die like that! But in the midst of such pain she found the peace of mind to dictate her last testament. SeÑorita Valeria has inherited Villa Rosa, and several hundred thousand francs: all that she won that night at the Sporting Club. As for your Highness...."

The Prince interrupts him with a gesture. He has known for a long time, from the letters of Don Marcos, that Alicia remembered him in her last moments, leaving him heir to her silver mines in Mexico, all that she possessed on the other side of the ocean; nothing at the present moment, but in the future perhaps a fortune, almost as great as that which Lubimoff formerly held in Russia.

He remains with his eyes fixed on the grave. On it he sees some fine moss, a miniature forest, opening its branches at the breath of spring, and among the tiny leaves diminutive flowers are stirring. Several greenish black butterflies, spotted with red, are fluttering above this murmuring forest of budding life, much as the monstrous prehistoric birds fluttered above the first vegetation of the globe.

Michael sees a relation between these insects and the spirit that dwelt in the organism now disintegrating a few feet under the ground beneath his feet. The varied, clashing colors remind him of the dead woman's soul. In the same way a few minutes before, a white butterfly fluttering above the flowers brought by Lewis reminded him of the child-like and sublime soul of Lady Mary.

At present, sitting in the cafÉ, his emotions are greater than in the cemetery. He can see events through a veil of memory, spiritualized, and free from the sediment of reality.

Poor Alicia! Poor woman, disillusioned of life! The triumphant Venus, the Helen of the "old men on the wall," the beauty who was the center of the Universe, more eager for admiration than for love, is lying in this miserable cemetery, among the bodies of soldiers. Perhaps she voluntarily hastened her exit from a world in which she could not find her place, defeated by her own actions.

Our lives are nothing more than what we will them to be. We create life in our own image; it is useless for us to complain of fate: we are what we want to be. It was impossible for Alicia to end her days save in some extraordinary manner, in harmony with her previous career. He, too, has lived as most men do not live, and he will die a different death from them.

He feels neither grief nor resentment. He is surprised that he could have hated Martinez and desired this woman with such vehemence. At present he feels only melancholy and a deep sadness at the memory of those dreams that no longer exist and which are beginning to die a second death, in being forgotten by those who knew of them. They have no immortality save in the memory of the Prince, a poor memory destined to fade away in turn before many years.

In his imagination he attempts to pierce the mass of earth that covers the dead body; he makes an effort to penetrate with his vision into the densest of the shadows. Only a few months of decomposition have gone by: her personality has not yet wasted away completely. He sees her as she was in life and at the same time as she is now. Her flesh is disintegrating in little putrid rivulets that run down the folds of her clothes, blackened and eaten away. She is forced to smile at all times in the darkness: she no longer has any lips. Her eyes serve as a refuge for the prolific grave flies which engender millions and millions of destroyers. And this annihilation of something which existed, thought, and loved, is as yet only in its first stages.

After the devourers of the soft parts will come the irresistible artisans of the bones. Myriads of micro-scopical workers will plow the skeleton, cleaning away the last impurities clinging to the framework, undoing the marvelous articulations, scraping away the cement which holds the vertebrÆ together. Some day the lower jaw will loosen, falling toward the abdominal cavity, leaving the upper jaw bone, the teeth of which knew the splendor of smiles and the caress of kisses. Some other day, the skull, as the pivot on which it rests comes apart, will fall in turn and mingle with the dust of the ribs and the little bones of the feet which mark the rhythm of an undulating walk. Within a few centuries revolutions and wars will perhaps bring this skull to the surface. Why not? Lubimoff has just seen at the front numerous cemeteries swept away by gunfire, with the dead emerging from the earth, raised thus by the bursting shells. And when some one, in the future, with the eternal curiosity of the Shakespearean Prince takes Alicia's skull in his hand, he will not be able to tell whether it belonged to a lady or a servant, whether it belonged to a beauty or to a drab.

Michael recalls with ironical sadness all the illusions, all the desires, he had in the past, concentrated on this nothingness. He begins to feel the need of forgetting the corpse. His eyes, looking within, see the diminutive foliage, the gaudy butterfly, and all that nature has placed on a nameless tomb. This is what a life which considered itself superior to all others has left as the only trace of its existence. Perhaps in the corolla of one of the little flowers there is something of Alicia's soul, the butterflies sip it, and continue in an intoxicated flight above the tombs.

Springtime! The Prince lifts his thoughts above the sorrows of individuals. He recalls what he has seen in a corner of the world ruined by man's bestiality: cities in ruins; villages that raise their walls only a yard above the soil, like towns which have been excavated after a cataclysm; barns set on fire; endless fields made sterile, torn apart and turned topsy turvy by five years of bombardment; many graves—thousands of graves—millions of graves. Women, dressed in black, stagger along the roads through the ruins and the funnel-shaped chasms opened by the monstrous projectiles. They have lost their children, they have seen their husbands executed, and now they are exploring the soil in search of their homes that were....

But the Winter-time of war is over; and now the Spring of Peace is here. The same hand, touching all things with green, puts little flowers and butterflies on the nameless graves, hangs fragrant garlands on the fire-blackened walls, spreads a velvet carpet of emerald on the sides of the shell holes, makes the birds warble and the insects stir above the tombs, and guides the curling creepers over the black wood of the crosses, as though trying to change them into thyrsi.

Alas! The earth knows nothing of our sorrows.

The Prince comes out of his abstraction, and sees the Colonel greeting him from a distance.

Don Marcos is already back, and with him is Madame Toledo, whose head scarcely reaches his shoulder. On the way she looks back several times, with the hope of finding herself followed by the American soldier.

On recognizing the Prince in the cafÉ, however, she forgets the other man, and seems to be entreating him with her eyes to leave his seat and to go out with her to the terraces.

The Colonel and his minx disappear in the direction of the terraces, and again Michael plunges into meditation. He recalls his talk with Don Marcos, shortly before, as they were descending from the cemetery.

Toledo seems inconsolable. According to him the war has not ended properly. He appears scandalized at the absurd manner of its conclusion! What terrible times these are! The fugitive of Amerongen disconcerts and irritates him.

"And imagine me doing him the honor of comparing him to a Lieutenant! I considered him man enough at least to blow his brains out!

"For thirty years he has been frightening the world with the rattle of his saber, and with his boastful mustache; for thirty years he has been calling himself war lord, making whole races tremble at his frown, his heroic attitudinizing, and his melodramatic speeches; for thirty years he has been preparing millions of men for slaughter, obliging peoples of the world to live under arms in the midst of peace. And now, when misfortune seeks him for her own, when he considers his life in danger, he shamefully flees to a foreign country and deserts his supporters, like a merchant going into a fraudulent bankruptcy."

"It is the greatest lie humanity has ever known," the Colonel shouts indignantly. "The greatest swindle in history."

It does not prove anything to kill one's self; Don Marcos is well aware of that. But in this life there are so many things that do not prove anything and which nevertheless are beautiful and logical! The despair of those who commit suicide through love does not prove anything either, and yet it has inspired the greatest works of poetry and other arts. The sailor, who wrecks his ship, kills himself; every man of honor who considers his fault irreparable appeals to death, in order that when he falls, he may fall in a dignified manner.

"And that Emperor," Toledo continued, "who planned an organized slaughter of ten million men, wants to live to a ripe old age. It's the most shameless thing I ever heard of!

"Military honor, such as it had come to be understood through the various centuries, was unknown likewise to his generals. Those specialists in burning towns, those technicians in executing peasants, those artisans of terror, on seeing disaster coming, tranquilly returned to their castles, like office boys leaving their work.

"Of all these companions of the 'war lord,' the only one worthy of respect was a civilian, a manufacturer, a Jew, the munition maker Ballin, of Hamburg, who on seeing the Empire ruined, did not want to survive it and shot himself. In the meantime the Marshals of the strategy that failed, tranquilly begin to devote themselves to training their dogs, writing their memoirs, and looking after their health.

"Napoleon, in one of his last battles, stopped his horse over a lighted bomb; later he tried to poison himself at Fontainebleau. He courted death, and resigned himself to living, like a fatalist, only on becoming convinced that death would have nothing to do with him. The other Napoleon, the one of Sedan, may have taken refuge in Belgium, abandoning his troops much as the sad German CÆsar had done; but ill and fainting, on his horse, he nevertheless preferred to gallop along a high road swept by gun fire, hoping that a shell would tear him to pieces."

That is the way Toledo understands military honor. That is the way it has been accepted in all ages.

Against the Imperial generals, recreants, ready to run in the hour of danger, like comedians thinking only of their reputations, his anger is implacable. Hemmed in by the Allies, with their lines broken, they might have fallen nobly fighting until the last moment. But they preferred to beg for an armistice and hand over their weapons, in order that the imbeciles who had admired them so greatly might go on believing in their divine invincibility, and be sure that if they were retiring to their estates it was only out of consideration for internal politics.

"Sorry comedians, like their master, up to the very last moment!" And Don Marcos, thinking of the fear these men have made the whole world feel for thirty years, cries out in anger:

"Swindlers! Swindlers!"

Once more the Prince comes out of his reverie. Somebody has stopped in front of him, and he hears a well known voice.

"Your Highness, what a joy to see you! The Colonel has just told me of your arrival."

It is Spadoni: the same old Spadoni, as though but a few hours have gone by since his last interview with the Prince; as though it is only yesterday that he bellowed with indignation, as he studied at the piano What the Palm Tree Said to the Century Plant.

He doesn't want to sit down: he is in a hurry; he came just to shake hands with his Highness. He will make a point of seeing him later when he has more time, in the Casino. He takes it for granted that the Prince is going into the Casino. Where else could a decent person go in Monte Carlo?

He gives Lubimoff's uniform a rapid glance, and admires his rough soldierly appearance.

"I have heard of the great deeds of your Highness; I always used to ask the Colonel about you ... a hero!"

Lubimoff has scarcely time to shake his head at this praise. Spadoni starts to talk about something more interesting. The war, heroes, and all that, are nebulous, meaningless things. He is for reality, and begins to talk about a new personage whom he admires, a Portuguese who plays big stakes, and whose name, because of his winnings, during the last few days, has been filling the gambling rooms.

"I am studying him; besides, he is a friend of mine and I think I have his secret. Imagine, Prince...."

The Prince grows uneasy, guessing that he is going to describe in all its details the combination of the Portuguese, which he already considers his own. But the pianist looks towards the Casino, stammers, and finally interrupts his account. Some one is coming and he wants to share his secret only with the Prince. He takes his leave with the promise that some time he will reveal the precious combination.

Lubimoff thinks of his life during the last few months, his adventures as a soldier, of his wound, of all that has happened to him and to the entire world, while that musician has remained stationary in Monte Carlo, admitting nothing as real save the hovering flight of the Great Delusion.

His friend Lewis holds out his hand to the Prince. It is he who, by his approach, has stopped the pianist's flow of eloquence. Gamblers, out of professional rivalry, avoid telling one another their secrets. Time, which seems to have forgotten Spadoni, leaving him the same as when Michael last saw him in his "Villa of the Tomb," has laid its claws on Lewis, making him older, as though months for him have been years.

He is sad because of the losses he has been suffering, and because of his memories. That niece of his was all the family he had! Lubimoff knows through the Colonel that he has not inherited anything from her. The nurse spent her entire fortune on ambulances and hospitals. Her title is the one thing that has gone to Lewis. His prophecy has come true: he is now the third Lord Lewis, surnamed "the Worthless," the name he gave himself.

He gazes on the Prince for a long time, notices the rigid arm and then shakes his left hand effusively.

"You're a man, Lubimoff. You know how to do things."

And in these words there is a reproach for himself. Unable to tear himself away from Monte Carlo, he will live here and die here, doing the same things over and over.

Nevertheless, this is a great day for him. In the morning he received a visit from a friend who is coming to live with him, he does not know for how long, perhaps for two days, perhaps for two years; a great friend from whom he had had no news and whom he had often imagined dead; the Count, the famous Count.

He has come as far as the cafÉ with Lewis, who refuses to be separated from him; he has shaken hands with the Prince as though he had seen him the day before, without noticing his uniform or his mutilation. He sits silently in a chair, running his hand through his white, curly hair, fixing his round eyes, with a nocturnal fire, on the people who are walking about the "Camembert."

Lewis believes he ought to feel happy. What a day of surprise it has been! First the Count, and then the Colonel telling him of Lubimoff's arrival.

He avoids talking about his niece: he sinks his sadness in the sadness of all the rest.... Peace has surprised him: who could have imagined it would come so soon, following immediately on the most anxious phase of the war?

The Count comes to life at this query.

"Every one," says he. "The great soothsayers, the great ones, announced at the very beginning, that the war would end in the Fall of 1918. It was well known to everybody. I have always said so. You have heard me say so many times yourself, Lewis."

Lewis makes a gesture of surprise. But he cannot doubt the science of his learned friend, and prefers to admit that it is he who has forgotten. He has such a bad memory! Perhaps, even, he may have misunderstood. These guardians of a knowledge of the future never express their truths clearly: they refuse to talk like ordinary mortals.

The conversation begins to lag. The Englishman is thinking of the Casino. He was just going in when Don Marcos gave him the news of the Prince's arrival. He keeps the Count by his side. The Count has just returned from a mysterious trip and has the devil's rosary safe in a certain pocket of his trousers, constantly feeling in it with his right hand.

"Later on we shall see each other at the Casino. I suppose you'll come in for a moment. We'll see if luck treats me well to-day after such pleasant meetings."

And he goes off with the Count in the direction of the Palace where he is destined, as though in prison, to spend the rest of his life.

Lubimoff notices two Italian soldiers who are looking at him from the sidewalk around the "Camembert." They are a couple of bersaglieri, dressed in gray, with little round hats decked out in cock's plumes. Noticing that the Prince is looking at them they become embarrassed, turn their backs as though ashamed, and walk away, but not without smiling first and raising their hands to their much beplumed hats.

The Prince recalls what Don Marcos told him. Oh, yes! They are Estola and Pistola, changed into soldiers! They have come on leave to see their families. They are going up to the Colonel's house in the evening to pay their respects to their former "Lord." They seem taller, and more vigorous. A few months of war have been sufficient to transport them from adolescence into maturity. In every man there is a soldier!

Just as he is getting up to take a walk around the terraces, he sees hurrying toward the cafÉ a gentleman who is violently waving to him, and then has to stop to fasten his glasses more securely on his nose.

It takes some time for the Prince to recognize him. He guesses who it is more by the tone of his voice than by his features. Dear old Novoa! The months that have gone by have left a deeper imprint on him than on the rest. He is no longer the young man preoccupied with worldly pomp, who used to consult the Colonel about the merits of various tailors and hatters. He has returned to the slavery of baggy-kneed trousers and ready-made neckties. His beard is full grown and bushy. He is still as young as ever in his voice, his eyes, and his lively and clumsy gestures; but he is dressed, not to say disguised, as an old man.

The Professor is more effusive than the rest on seeing the Prince. He keeps blessing the happy chance, which brought Lubimoff to him, through his meeting with Don Marcos shortly before.

"If you had waited two days longer, Prince, I wouldn't have had the pleasure of seeing you. I am going back to my country day after to-morrow. I have had enough now of Monte Carlo. When I think of what I've lost here!... Money, dreams, everything."

Michael shows discretion. He suspects his friend has had some unexpected disillusionment, some deception, such as one must forget not to be continually tormented by it. He remembers Valeria, and sees nothing in the Professor's appearance to indicate the slightest trace of contact with that lady. He is a ruin, a dry dead tree; the bird that formerly sang in the branches must have flown away long since.

Novoa is equally discreet. He looks at the other man's uniform, and the sleeve with the artificial arm; but he speaks in a general way, with vague regrets, only of what has taken place during the last few months.

"What extraordinary things have taken place! How many friends of ours have died! Life has finally become one of those dramas in which one dies at the end of the last act."

The Prince guesses that Novoa is thinking of Alicia and in order not to give him pain, is refraining from mentioning her. As a matter of fact he is indeed thinking of the Duchess, but she is merely a point of departure before he comes to the other woman with whom his memory is constantly occupied.

At last he speaks, giving full rein to his melancholy. He can tell the Prince everything because he is the only man who knows his secret. (He has told the Colonel and even Spadoni the same thing, on lamenting his misfortune.) And he breaks into despairing recriminations against Valeria.

She has become a different woman. She is no longer interested in "lands of love," where women marry without dowries. Since the Duchess's death she has become a candidate for marriage. Her hand will bring with it more than three hundred thousand francs. The Professor has found himself jilted and forgotten. How he had grovelled before her when the truth was known; what shameful efforts he had made to remedy what he had considered at the outset a woman's passing whim! He hates to remember moments such as those.

"It is all ended, Prince. At present she is crazy about an American officer and will finally marry him. No one counts here except the Americans. Everything is for them: even love. The humblest little milliner considers herself disgraced if she hasn't a soldier from the United States to promenade with in the evening. Every afternoon she and the other man dance in the hotels of La Condamine, or right here in the CafÉ de Paris."

He stops, as though some one had touched him on the shoulder. He does not see any one behind him, but his eyes, wandering over the groups sitting at the tables meet something which makes his voice tremble.

"It is she, Prince."

Michael would not have recognized her. He sees two ladies, escorted by two American officers, entering the CafÉ. One of them is Valeria, dressed with gay and showy elegance, as though anxious to compensate in a moment for years of frugality and privation.

Against the soft twilight the cafÉ windows begin to gleam with a reddish glow. One after another, the large lamps within are lighted. To the Prince's ears come the voluptuous wailings of violins.

"Life has changed very greatly since you went away, Prince. Every one feels a desperate hunger for amusement. The first thing that peace brought back to life was the tango."

Then Novoa begins to think about himself:

"What can I do here? I am poor. Everything I possessed in my country I have dropped here in the Casino. I have studied the mysteries of the ocean enough. How dearly it has cost me! I have had my little dream, and now I am going to resume my ill-paid work back there as a day laborer in science."

He thinks once more of her.

"Did you notice?... The poor Duchess, who made her what she is now, is lying up there in her grave, and here she is dancing, only a few months after her death."

He feels the harsh indignation, the sense of outraged morality, that all who have been scorned experience.

His anger grows so strong that he gets up from his chair. He cannot remain there. The woman has seen him, and might think that he is pursuing her, that he is waiting for her to come out, in order to entreat her. Never; he has had enough of certain humiliations which he does not care to remember.

He hurriedly says good-by. They will see each other again soon. Don Marcos has invited him to dinner at the little house in Beausoleil. The Colonel was sure that his visit would please the Prince.

He grasps Lubimoff's hand and does not seem to notice it is the wooden one. His eyes and his thoughts are on the cafÉ windows, ablaze in mid afternoon. Through them the cadenced murmur of the violins is passing. As he walks away he still repeats his protest.

"The poor Duchess up there forgotten.... And the other woman. What a scandal! I am glad I'm going away soon, and will never see her again."

On remaining alone, the Prince leaves his table. Don Marcos is doubtless telling the news of his arrival to every one he meets, and Michael is afraid that other less interesting persons will appear.

As he walks along he notices something which he had not seen before when he was with the Colonel. The United States flag is floating above all the buildings. In the city streets there are as many signs in English as in French. There are American soldiers everywhere. Lubimoff's uniform and that of the other French fighters are lost in the great flood of men dressed in mustard color. The light automobiles of the American army pass incessantly. They are everywhere. One meets them in the streets, on the roads along the coast and climbing the slopes of the Alps like buzzing, snorting ants. Everything seems animated by a robust, gay, self-confident life, the life of a twenty-year-old boy. The concert on the terraces is being given by an American band. The people walking in the streets absent-mindedly whistle dance tunes from across the ocean and marching songs of the soldiers from the States. People stop in the squares to admire the skill of the Americans in shirt sleeves throwing a ball and sending it back again after catching it in a kind of fencing glove.

Monaco seems to have been conquered by the troops of the Great Republic; a good-natured and kindly conquest, which makes the conquered smile. It is the same in Nice and everywhere on the Riviera. The Prince recalls his brief stay in Paris a few days before. There he saw Americans just as here. How many are they? What superhuman power has been able to create in a few months this army which though of recent birth, seems to fill all space?

A people has just risen above all the peoples of the earth. Never in history has such a rise been known. It dominates through friendliness, through its generous acts, and by the beneficent strength of its activities; not through terror, the base of all greatness in the past.

Lubimoff recalls his doubts of the year before. No one would have believed that a people without armies could improvise a military force equal to those of old Europe. And in only a few months the United States had organized and transported two million men to decide the outcome of the struggle, and the world's fate.

Arriving at the last moment, they had liberally given their share of dead. In five months of campaign a hundred and twenty thousand Americans had perished, a huge proportion compared to the losses of the other nations during five years of fighting.

Michael, in his silent enthusiasm, enumerates what has just been done for humanity by this great people, which shortly before was considered utilitarian and selfish, and which now reveals itself as the most romantic and generous.

Two great wars are the most striking incidents in its history: one within, for the suppression of slavery; the other, without, to prevent the glorification of war, the brutal hegemony of one people over all, the exaltation of a mystic imperialism.

For the first time in history, a democracy has intervened in the fate of a world through the centuries subjected to the rule of kings. The modern republics had until now lived an inner and retiring life. The wars of the French Revolution were defensive. The Republic of the Convention fought to exist, since all the monarchs wanted to suppress it. The American Republic had voluntarily entered the struggle, without being threatened by any immediate danger, because of a mandate of its conscience, indignant at German crimes, because of the responsibility developing upon its greatness, its democratic strength.

Before arming, before intervening in the European crash while living in patient neutrality, battles were being won for it. This war was different from others. Against Germany, ready through long years of preparation for the struggle, and with all its industrial and commercial strength mobilized for war purposes, the Allies fought during the first few months, as a brave but backward people fights against a modern nation. They showed much bravery, and great heroism, sometimes in vain, against the blind mechanical force of industrial invention applied to destruction.

If this inequality kept diminishing, it was thanks in large part to the Republic beyond the sea. Its money barons made enormous loans to the Allies; its captains of industry facilitated the manufacture of the gigantic equipment demanded by the demon-like progress of military science; its ships defying the submarine menace, brought bread which had grown scarce in Europe through the war.

And when, its patience finally exhausted, it directly intervened, what generosity it showed!

The American combatants fought for simple and robust ideals: the rights of the weak to live, the dignity and freedom of mankind, the elimination of wars, understanding between peoples, sovereign right ruling the life of nations; things which shortly before had made the Old World skeptics smile.

All the countries of Europe had frontiers to reËstablish, strips of land to claim. The United States of America was not asking for anything, it did not want anything.

Each one of the contestants, on thinking of victory, calculated the indemnities it should collect to compensate for its endeavors and sacrifices. The American Republic spent more than all the other nations. The maintenance of each of its soldiers cost it as much as seven soldiers from the other countries, and nevertheless, it entered the war and withdrew from the war without demanding any particular reimbursement.

Lubimoff admired its enormous strength in victory: Never had any Empire in the past reached such greatness; not even Rome.

It was the only country, at once both industrial and agricultural, on earth. It formed a world apart within the world. It might, without suffering, isolate itself from the rest of the Globe; but the world would feel a sensation of emptiness if the Great Republic were to turn its back upon the other nations.

Its armed citizens were retiring without boasting and without commotion, just as they had come, and without asking anything for their great endeavor. They would disappear like the fairies and enchanters in ancient legends who, after doing good, need to return to their mysterious domains.

Years would pass: history would speak of this endeavor, unique in its intensity and its generous character, and on the Riviera and in other places there would remain of this great world a memory disfigured by time. The boys of to-day, grown old, would remember how they learned to play baseball from the soldiers who had come from a land of marvels beyond the sea, the girls, becoming grandmothers, would yearningly recall the American lovers they once had.

The Prince calculates again the greatness of this people, the only one capable of still working the miracles, that religions sometimes work in the early period of their exaltation.

The Great Republic is the world's creditor. All the victorious nations owe it fabulous sums; England is its debtor by thousands of millions, and France the same. The smaller countries, Belgium, Serbia, and the rest, have been able to live, thanks to its enormous loans. It is not all known as yet, years must pass before the full extent of these generosities is brought to light. This country, which likes advertisement and loud propaganda in its commercial affairs, is modest and concise in speaking of its disinterested acts.

"To go on freely living after the cataclysm, humanity is going to need America's support, or America's benevolence," thinks the Prince. "The political center of the world has shifted. It is no longer in Paris, nor is it in London. It remained for a while, trembling unsteadily on its base, in Berlin; but now it has leaped across the ocean."

The man, as yet unknown, who in the future is to take his place in the White House for four years, professor, lawyer, merchant, or farmer, as he may be, will sway the destiny of the world more than all the rulers who fill history with the din of warlike glory. His power will be based on something more permanent and solid than the strength of armies. It will have behind it industry and wealth, which create armies; democratic power, which the power of public opinion creates.

The irresistible strength of this power is clearly seen by the Prince.

Germany, in spite of her continual military triumphs in the first few years of the war, has finally fallen in defeat. Public opinion was against her. The democratic spirit of the entire world rose against the spirit of Empire.

This triumph of democracy is beginning to be manifest everywhere.

"There is no longer a single emperor left in Europe," Michael goes on thinking. "The vanquished empires want to be republics. All the kings are forgetting their ancestors with their divine rights, and are trying to have their crowns forgiven them, that they may imitate the simple life of a president."

This unexpected attitude of the world gives it a new love of life.

He has realized, for the last few months—since he gave up Villa Sirena—that Prince Michael Fedor Lubimoff has become an unfashionable personage. Perhaps, with the lapse of years, others will be as he was. History repeats itself. Times of peace and plenty inevitably produce men such as he had been. But at present humanity has been restored by grief and sacrifice, humanity is anxious to live, and longs for something new, without knowing exactly what, and is working to secure it.

Michael looks on himself with pity. What is he going to do? What can men like himself do for their fellow men?

He recalls the luncheon in the little house of Don Marcos. He is still offended by the attentions the Colonel shows him at table, cutting his meat, looking after him like a child, trying to make up for the absence of his arm. It is something disgraceful!

Farewell to Prince Lubimoff!... Even if he still wanted to continue his selfish existence, entirely given up to pleasure, it would be impossible for him. He is a cripple; he considers himself quite old. No one but Mado, who doesn't really know what she wants, would ever notice him.

Besides, he feels poor. For the first time he recalls with a certain satisfaction the heritage left him by Alicia. It was not worth anything at that moment, but who knows but what some day...! He dreams that perhaps those Mexican mines may replace his lost fortune in Russia; and then...! He feels a strong desire to regain his wealth in order to do good; a longing which is something like remorse. He knows the inefficiency of individual effort in remedying human misery: a mere drop lost in the ocean, a grain of sand on the beach. But what difference does that make? He is satisfied in giving happiness to some fifty unfortunate beings, among the hundreds of millions who people the earth.

Then he thinks of his present situation. That very morning he determined on his mode of life. He will flee from the poor Colonel, because of Mado. Others may take it upon themselves to bring misfortune to Don Marcos, but not he! He will take up his residence in Nice, in a Russian pension run by an impoverished noblewoman. In the evenings they will talk of the days when she was rich, beautiful, and desired; of the dances at the Petersburg Court, in which they danced together so often. Lubimoff even has a suspicion that one of his duels was over this boarding-house keeper.

The remnants of his fortune will bring him a sufficient income to live in modest comfort. He will swell the number of wrecks retiring to the Riviera, to recall, under the palm trees, their forgotten triumphs. His old valet will accompany him in his dethronement.

He already has an occupation to fill his hours. He wants to be a contemplator of life. He is glad to have been born in the most interesting of periods.

Something is going to happen; something new in history.

The smoke has not yet cleared away from the battlefields. It is a mist in which people lose their way and which does not allow them to see the complete outline of things. The very actors in the recent drama are blind. Years will pass, before the mist rises and vanishes, leaving the new world visible.

Will it be the same stage setting as of yore, merely with a few lines changed? Will all these bloody efforts to suppress violence, selfishness, and pre-historic ferocity as the chief bases of society, turn out to have been in vain?

The Prince thinks bitterly of the possible disillusionment. How terrible to see primitive bestiality rise again unharmed after a cataclysm which has been accepted as a regeneration! How terrible to contemplate the failure of so many generous spirits, of so many noble minds, aspiring toward the triumph of good, anxious for peace among men, and the sweet association of people, working against war as medical societies labor to exterminate diseases!

Faith in the future suddenly animates him. The world cannot always be the same; great convulsions, when they have passed, never leave the soil the same as they found it. Will children always be annihilating each other just because their fathers and grandfathers did so? Must they look on each other with hostility because they were born on different sides of a mountain, a river, or a wood, which politics calls a frontier?

We all have two native lands! The place where we were born, and the State to which we belong. Why not generously broaden this conception to include a third country? Will not a blessed time come in which men will talk as fellow being to fellow being, without thinking whether or not History commands them to hate and kill each other? With deep love for one's land of birth, cannot they be at the same time citizens of the world?

The Prince is leaning on the balustrade, above the terraces and the harbor. His pensive walk has brought him thither, without his realizing it.

He turns his back on the sea and on the crowd which, after the concert, is beginning to thin out there below. The American musicians are passing close to him, followed by a swarm of small boys accompanying their retirement.

He looks at a gap on the horizon, between the Alps and the promontory of Monaco, where the sun has just gone down. Above the reddish expanse a star is shining with the brilliancy and luminous facets of a precious stone.

Lubimoff is thinking of the ancient fathers of poetry who sang about it three thousand years ago. Homer called it Kalistos. Sometimes the morning star and at other times the evening star, Lucifer, Vesperus, or the "Shepherds' Star," it finally received the name of Venus, because of its shining whiteness, like that of a diamond on a woman's breast.

The Prince feels the sweet caress in his eyes as he gazes on the soft glow of the planet. Its name symbolizes beauty and love. He imagines the people who inhabit that celestial point of light lost in space. They must be of a purer essence than ours, entirely free from a past of primitive animality—ethereal beings, like the angels of all religions.

Then he smiles bitterly.

There is another star shining in the sky, more beautiful and larger than that one. It is blue instead of white, a soft blue: the color of poetry and dreams. It sparkles, in the dark depths of space, with the mysterious glow of the enormous bluish diamonds which Oriental monarchs place in their tiaras. Those who contemplate it feel in their eyes the velvety dew of divine mystery. Perhaps the poets of other worlds sing of it as a chosen refuge and a place of eternal beauty, where only the souls of the pure and the elect may go to rest. Perhaps it has given rise to religions and is the object of cults, having its altars, as the sun had in former times.

And this blue diamond of space, this world of soft light, which the populations of other planets contemplate as a poetic star, and as one in which all creatures lead a purely spiritual life, is the Earth, our poor globe, where twelve millions of men have just died on the battlefield, where as many more millions died of the emotion and plagues, which are the consequence of war; and where six hundred thousand millions of francs have been consumed in smoke, fire, and bursting steel.

Lubimoff remembers his impressions, a few hours before, standing beside a tomb which was beginning to be changed at the first halting words of Spring. The Infinite does not know us, nor does the very earth which maintains us know us either.

We are alone in the infinite, without other support than that of our own lives, our own illusions, and our own hopes. Man can rely only on man.

And he repeats what he had said of the earth that morning.

The sky knows nothing of our sorrows.

He slowly turns toward the square.

From all the cafÉs, restaurants, and hotels, comes the musical rise and fall of the cadenced violins. Behind the great windows, reddened by an inner light, he see couples passing intertwined, following the rhythm of the music. They are dancing, dancing, dancing.

Youth does nothing else. Dancing is a sort of sacred rite, prohibited during the war; and people are all devoting themselves in dancing now, with the fervor of zealots finally celebrating the triumphs of their persecuted religion.

The Prince recalls his recent passage through Paris. He had never seen the women better dressed, with so manifest a hunger for pleasure and luxury. The tango of the violins on the Boulevard is answered like an echo by the tango of the violins all along the Riviera, and at the summer resorts which are beginning to open. Woman's dearest wish, at the moment, is to dance the latest dance with a fighter from the United States!

The nightmare of war has vanished; everything has been forgotten. For many people nothing remains to recall the conflict save the uniforms, more numerous than formerly in the thÉs dansants.

Michael confines his meditation to this coast, which was always the domain of the blessed! For four long years war has turned Monaco upside down and filled it with darkness.

His imagination runs up and down the gulfs and promontories. There is a cemetery on each. In Mentone thousands and thousands of negroes lie under the earth. The combatants from Africa, whose fathers knew only the lance and the breech-clout, have chanced to perish like gladiators on this shore of European millionaires. In Cap-Martin the English have left their dead; in Monaco, there are some of every nationality; in Cap-Ferrat, the Belgians sleep, under wreaths already old; in Nice, are the bodies of the Americans; and everywhere, from Esterel to the Italian frontier, there are Frenchmen, Frenchmen, Frenchmen.

The dead are innumerable. Were they all to rise together, those who come to prolong their lives under the palm tree and the olive on the shores of the Violet Sea, would flee aghast.

But the aim of life is to live. Life is an endless Springtime, and covers everything it touches with the eager moss of pleasure, with the swiftly creeping ivy of dreams.

The cemeteries, strikingly white, seem to take on a duller tone, and are lost in the smiling landscape, like an unessential note in a song. The softness of the skies and the surrounding country changes them to gardens. A body occupies so little space and the earth is so large!... The hotels which were hospitals, are regilding their signs, disinfecting their rooms and sending advertisements to the great newspapers of the world. Already people may come and dream between the walls which just now shook with cries of pain, or the rattle of death agonies. Music is beginning sweetly to moan along the happy coast, amid the murmur of the waves and the rustling of the orange trees, of epithalamial perfume. The old shepherd of the Alps, who, after sixty years, has not yet recovered from his amazement at the Monte Carlo which has arisen there below on the once deserted tableland, will see it grow with new palaces and new towers, further expanding its opulence like a city of dreams.

The passage of death has made love of life more keen. Every one, seeing the black banner of the Adversary vanish in the darkness, finds new zest in pleasure.

Lubimoff stops in the middle of the square. It is beginning to grow dark. With one ear he hears the musical swing of a dance invented by the negroes of North America for the enjoyment of the whites; and with the other he hears other negro music, the South American tango. In the adjoining streets new orchestras are playing wherever there is a public place, cafÉ, hotel, or restaurant—with a sign in English at the door, to attract the heroes of the hour: Dancing.

He gazes at the mountain which forms a background for the square and watches over the graves on its slopes. Then he looks on high....

The earth and the sky know nothing of our sorrows.

And neither does life.

THE END