THE click of dominos is an accompaniment scarcely in harmony with a discussion of psychology and religion. But no subject is too sacred, or too profane, to be discussed in a cafÉ—that neutral ground where all parties and all sects meet; and it was a serious debate during a game of dominos that marked the beginning of a course of strange coincidences and sad occurrences that crowd one chapter in an eventful Bohemian life.

There were four of us art-students in the Academy of Antwerp assembled, as was our custom after the evening life-class, at a cafÉ in a quiet faubourg of the city. It was a gloomy November evening, cold and raw in the wind, but not too chill to sit in the open air under the lee of the wooden shed which enclosed two sides of the cafÉ garden. The heavy atmosphere had not crushed every spark of cheerfulness out of the buoyant natures of the materialistic Flemings, and the tables were filled with noisy bourgeois and their families, drinking the mild beer of Louvain or generous cups of coffee. Their gayety seemed sacrilegious in the solemn presence of approaching winter—that long, depressing, ghostly season which in the Low Countries gives warning of its coming with prophetic sobs and continued tears, and trails the shroud of summer before the eyes of shrinking mortals for weeks before it buries its victim. In a climate like that of Flanders, the winter, rarely marked by severe cold, really begins with the rainy season in early autumn, and it continues in an interminable succession of dismal days with shrouded skies.

On the evening in question the clouds seemed lower than usual; the wind was fitful and spasmodic, and came in long, mournful, insinuating sighs that stole in mockingly between the peals of music and laughter, and startled every one in his gayest mood. The gas-jets flickered and wavered weirdly, and the dry leaves danced accompaniment to the movements of the swift-footed waiters. The clatter of wooden shoes on the pavement without, and the measureless but not unmusical songs of the jolly workmen on their way home, filled the score of the medley of sounds that broke the sepulchral quiet of the evening.

There were four of us, as I have said: old Reiner, Tyck, Henley, and myself. Each represented a different nationality. Reiner was a Norwegian of German descent, tall and ungainly, with a large head, a shock of light-colored, coarse hair, a virgin beard, and a good-humored face focused in a pair of searching gray eyes that pried their way into everything that came under their owner’s observation. He was by no means a handsome man, neither was he unattractive; and his sober habits, cool judgment, and great stock of general information gained for him the familiar name of old Reiner among the more thoughtless and more superficial students who were his friends. He was by nature of a more scientific than artistic turn of mind. He was conversant with nine languages, including Sanskrit, had received a thorough university education in Norway and Germany, took delight in investigating every subject that came in his way—from the habits of an ant to the movements of the gold market in America—and could talk intelligently and instructively on every topic proposed to him. Indeed, his scientific and literary attainments were a wonder to the rest of us, who had lived quite as long and had accomplished much less. As an artist he had great talents as well; but here also his love of investigation constantly directed his efforts. In his academic course he had less success than might have been anticipated, except in the direction of positive rendering of certain effects. He was not a colorist; such natures rarely are; and it is probable that he would never have made a brilliant artist in any branch of the profession, for he was too much of a positivist, and even his historical pictures would have been little more than marvels of correctness of costume and accessories. In his association with us, the flow of his abundant good-humor, which sometimes seemed unlimited, was interrupted by occasional spells of complete reaction, when he neither spoke to nor even saw any one else, but made a hermit of himself until the mood had passed.

Tyck at first sight looked like a Spaniard. He was slight in stature, one short leg causing a stoop which made him appear still smaller than he was. His skin was of a clear brown, warmed by an abundance of rich blood; a mass of strong, curling hair, and a black moustache and imperial framed in a face of peculiar strong beauty. His eyes had something in them too deep to be altogether pleasing, for they caused one to look at him seriously, yet they were as full of laughter and good-nature and cheerfulness as dark eyes can be. His face was one that, notwithstanding its peculiarities, gave a good first impression; and a long friendship had proved him to be chargeable with fewer blemishes of character than are written down against the most of us. But his hands were not in his favor. They were long, bony, and cold; the finger-joints were large and lacked firmness, and the pressure of the hand was listless or unsympathetic. The lines of life were faint and discouraging, and there were few prominent marks in the palm. The secret of his complexion lay in his parentage, for his mother was a native woman of Java, and his father a Dutch merchant, who settled in that far-off country, built up a fortune, and raised a small family of boys, who deserted the paternal nest as soon as they were old enough to flutter alone. Tyck was a colorist. He seemed to see the tones of nature rich with the warm reflections of a tropical sun; and his studies from life, while strong and luscious in tone, were full of fire and subtle gradations—qualities combined rarely enough in the works of older artists. He was to all appearance in the flush of health, and, notwithstanding his deformity, was uncommonly active and fond of exercise. We who knew him intimately, however, always looked upon him as a marked man. With all his rugged, healthy look, his physique was not vigorous enough to resist the attacks of the common foe, winter, and we knew that he occasionally pined mentally and physically for the luxurious warmth of his native land. He flourished in the raw climate of Flanders only as a transplanted flower flourishes; still, he was not declining in health or strength.

It is a long and delicate process to build up an intimate friendship between men of mercurial temperament and such an impersonation of coolness and deliberation and studied manners as was Henley, the third member of our group. From his type of face and his peculiar bearing he was easily recognizable as an Englishman, and even as a member of the Church of England. His manner was plainly the result of a severe and formal training; his whole life, as he told us himself, had been passed under the careful surveillance of a strict father, who was for a long time the rector of one of the first churches of London. But Henley, serious, formal, and cool, was not uncompanionable; and I am not quite sure whether it was not the bony thinness of his face, his straggling black beard and abundant dead-colored hair, that predisposed one at first sight to judge him as a sort of melancholy black sheep among his lighter-hearted companions. So we all placed him at our first meeting. When once the ice was broken, and we felt the sympathetic presence that surrounded him in his intercourse with friends, he became a necessity to complete the current of our little circle, and his English steadiness often served a good purpose in many wordy tempests.

In religious opinions we four were as divided as we were distinct in nationality. Henley, as I have said, was a member of the Church of England. Tyck was a Jew and a Freemason. Reiner entirely disbelieved in everything that was not plain to him intellectually. Our discussions on religious subjects were long and warm, for the theories of the fourth member of the circle piled new fuel upon the flames that sprang up under the friction of the ideas of the other three, and on these topics alone we were seriously at variance. Rarely were our disputes carried to that point where either of us felt wounded after the discussion was ended, but on more than one occasion they were violent enough to have ruptured our little bond if it had not been strengthened by ties of more than ordinary friendship.

This friendship was of the unselfish order, too. We were in the habit of living on the share-and-share-alike principle. Henley was the only one who had any allowance, and he always felt that his regular remittance was rather a bar to his complete and unqualified admission to our little ring. The joint capital among us was always kept in circulation. When one had money and the others had none, and it suited our inclinations or the purposes of our study to visit the Dutch cities, or even to cross the Channel, we travelled on the common purse. Share-and-share-alike in cases less pressing than sickness or actual want may not be a sound mercantile principle; but where the freemasonry of mutual tastes, united purposes, and common hardships binds friend to friend, the spirit of communism is half the charm of existence. Especially is this true of Bohemian life.

In introducing the characters a little time has been taken, partly in order to give us a chance to move our table into a more sheltered corner, and to allow us to get well started in another game of dominos. As I remember that evening, Reiner, who had not entirely recovered from an attack of one of his peculiar moods, had been discussing miracles and mysteries with more than his accustomed warmth, and the rest of us had been cornered and driven off the field in turn; even to Henley, who was not, with all his study, quite as well up on the subject of the Jewish priests and the Druids as old Reiner, whom no topic seemed to find unprepared. When the discussion was at its height I observed in Reiner certain uneasy movements, and I instinctively looked behind him to see if any one was watching him, as his actions resembled those of a person under the mesmerism of an unseen eye. I saw no one, and concluded that my imagination had deceived me. But Reiner became suddenly grave and even solemn, and the debate stopped entirely. At last, after a long silence, Reiner proposed another game of dominos. When the pieces were distributed he began the moves, saying at the same time, quite in earnest and as if talking to himself, “This will decide it.”

His voice was so strange and his look so determined that we felt that something was at stake, and instinctively and in chorus declared that it was useless to play the game out, and proposed an adjournment to the sketching-club. Reiner did not object, and we rose to go. As we left the table I saw behind Reiner’s chair two small, luminous, green balls, set in a black mass, turned towards us—evidently the eyes of a dog, glistening in the reflection of the gas like emerald fires. Possibly the others did not notice the animal, and I was too much startled at the discovery of the unseen eye to speak of it at that moment. Before I had recovered myself completely we were out of the gate, followed by the dog. Under the street-lamp, he leaped about and seemed quite at home. He was seen to be a perfectly black Spitz poodle, with cropped ears and tail, very lively in his movements, and with a remarkably intelligent expression. He was a dog of a character not commonly met, and once observed was not easily mistaken for others of the same breed. Our walk to the club was dreary enough. The gloomy manner of old Reiner was contagious, and no one spoke a word. I was too busy reflecting on the strange manner in which our game had been interrupted to occupy myself with my companion, remembering the now frequent recurrence of Reiner’s blue days, and dreading his absence from the class and the club, which I knew from experience was sure to follow such symptoms as I had observed in the cafÉ. To the sketching-club we brought an atmosphere so forbidding that it seemed as if we were the heralds of some misfortune. Scarcely a cheerful word was said after our entrance, and frequent glasses of Louvain or d’orge, drunk on the production of new caricatures, failed to raise the barometer of our spirits. The meeting broke up early, and we four separated. The dog, which had been lying under a settee near the door, followed Reiner as he turned down the boulevard.

For a week we did not meet again. Reiner kept his room or was out of town. He made no sign, and without him we frequented neither the cafÉ nor the club. The weather grew cold and rainy; the last evening at the cafÉ proved to have been the final gasp of dying autumn, and winter had fairly begun. At last Reiner made his appearance at dinner one dark afternoon, and took his accustomed seat at our table, near the window which opened out upon the glass-covered court-yard of the small hotel where we used to dine, a score of us, artists and students all. He looked very weary and hollow-eyed; said he had been unwell, had taken an overdose of laudanum for neuralgia, and had been confined to his room for a few days. Expecting each day to be able to go out the next morning, he had neglected to send us word, and so the week had passed. As he was speaking I noticed a dog in the court-yard, the same black poodle that attached himself to us in the cafÉ. Reiner, observing my surprise, explained that the dog had been living with him at his room in the Steenhouwersvest, and that they were inseparable companions now. We could all see that old Reiner was not yet himself again. One of us ventured to suggest that there might be something Mephistophelian about the animal, and that Reiner was endeavoring, Faust-like, to get at the kernel of the beast, so as to fathom whatever mystery of heaven or earth was as yet to him inexplicable. No further remarks were made, as Reiner arose to go away, leaving his dinner untouched. He shook hands with us all almost solemnly, and with the poodle went out into the gloomy street.

Another week passed, and we saw neither Reiner nor the poodle. December began, and the days were short and dark, the sun scarcely appearing above the cathedral roof in his course from east to west. The absence of old Reiner was a constant theme of conversation, and there were multitudes of conjectures as to whether he were in love, in debt, or really ill. We had no message from him, not a word, not a written line.

One evening as we sat at dinner—it was Thursday, and a heavy rain was falling—the black poodle dashed suddenly in, closely followed by Reiner’s servant-girl, bonnetless and in slippers, and drenched to the skin. Her message was guessed before she had time to gasp out, “Och, Mynheeren, uwer vriend Reiner is dood!” Not waiting for explanations, we followed her as she returned through the slippery streets, scarcely walking or running. How I got there I never knew; it seemed at the time as if I were carried along by some superior force. Filled with dread and fear, mingled with hope that it was an awful mistake and that something might yet be done, I reached the door of the house. Through the grocery-shop, where was assembled a crowd of shivering, drenched people who had gathered there on hearing of the event, conscious that all were watching our entrance with solemn sympathy, not seeing distinctly any one or anything, forgetting the narrow, dark, and winding wooden stair, I was at the door of Reiner’s room in an instant. The tall figure of a gendarme was silhouetted against the window; a few women stood by the table whispering together, awe-stricken at the sight of something that was before them, to the left, and still hidden from me as I took in the scene on entering the door.

Another step brought me to the bedside. There in the dim light lay old Reiner, not as if asleep, for the awful pallor of death was on his face, but with an expression as calm and peaceful as if he were soon to awake from pleasant dreams, as if his soul were still dreaming on. He lay on his right side, with his head resting on his doubled arm. The bedclothes were scarcely disturbed, and his left arm lay naturally on the sheet which was turned over the coverlid. Great, dark stains splashed the wall behind the bed and the pillow; dark streaks ran along over the linen and made little pools upon the floor. His shirt-bosom was one broad, irregular blotch of blood, and in his left hand I could see the carved ivory handle of the little Scandinavian sheath-knife that he always carried in his belt. Before I had fully comprehended the awful reality of poor Reiner’s death, the doctor arrived, lights were brought, and the examination began. Our dead comrade’s head being raised and his shirt-bosom opened, there were exposed two great gashes across the left jugular vein and one across the right, and nine deep wounds in the breast. Few of the cuts would not have proved mortal, and the ferocity with which the fatal knife had been plunged again and again into his breast testified to the madness of the determination to destroy his life. On the dressing-table by the bed we found two small laudanum vials, both empty, and one over-turned, as if placed hastily beside its fellow. In all probability poor Reiner took this large dose of laudanum early in the morning, as it was found that he had been in bed during the entire day, and was seen by the servant to be sleeping at three o’clock in the afternoon. His iron constitution and great physical strength overcoming the effects of the narcotic, he probably awoke to consciousness late in the afternoon. Finding himself still alive, in the agonies of despair and disappointment at the unsuccessful attempt to dream over the chasm into the next world, he seized his knife and madly stabbed himself, doubtless feeling little pain, and only happily conscious that his long-planned step was successfully taken at last. The room was unchanged, nothing was disturbed, and there was no evidence of the premeditation of the suicide, except an open letter on the table, addressed to us, his friends. It contained a simple statement of his reasons for leaving the world, saying that he was discouraged with his progress in art, that he could not establish himself as an artist without great expense to his family and friends, and that he believed by committing suicide he simply annihilated himself—nothing more or less—and so ceased to trouble himself or those interested in him. He gave no directions as to the disposal of his effects, but enclosed a written confession of faith, which read:

Beside this letter on the table lay Henri Murger’s “ScÈnes de la Vie de BohÈme,” open, face downward. The pages contained the description of the death of one of the artists, and the following brief and touching sentence was underlined: “Il fut enterrÉ quelquepart.” A litter was brought from the hospital, and four men carried away the body; the dog, which we had come to look upon almost with horror, closely following the melancholy procession as it gradually disappeared in the drizzling gloom of the narrow streets. We three went to our rooms in a strange bewilderment, and huddled together in speechless grief and horror around the little fireplace. When bedtime came we separated and tried to sleep, but I doubt if an eye was closed or the awful vision of poor Reiner, as we last saw him, left either of us for a moment.

The days that followed were, to me at least, most agonizing. The terrible death of old Reiner grew less and less repulsive and more horribly absorbing. I had often read of the influence of such examples on peculiarly constituted minds, but had never before felt the dread and ghastly fascination which seemed to grow upon me as the days following the tragedy drew no veil across the awful spectacle, ever present in my mind’s eye, but rather added vividness and distinctness to the smallest details of the scene. My bed, with its white curtains, the conventional pattern of heavy Flemish furniture found in every room, came to be almost a tomb, in the morbid state of my imagination. I could never look at its long, spotless drapery without fancying my own head on the pillow, my own blood on the wall and staining with splashes of deep red the curtain and sheets. The number and shape of the spots on old Reiner’s bed seemed photographed on the retina of my eye, and danced upon the slender, graceful folds of the curtains as often as I dared look at them. A little nickel-plated derringer, always lying on my table as a paper-weight, often found its way into my hands, and I would surprise myself wondering whether death by such a means were not, after all, preferable to destruction by the knife. A few cartridges in the corner of my closet, which I had hidden away to keep them from the meddling hands of the servant, seemed to draw me towards them with a constant magnetism. I could not forget that shelf and that particular spot behind a bundle of paint-rags. If there was need of anything on that particular shelf for months after Reiner’s death, I always took it quickly and resolutely, shutting the closet door as if I were shutting in all the evil spirits that could possess me. The tempter was exorcised, but with difficulty, and to this day, for all I know, the cartridges may still lie hidden there. Then, too, a quaint Normandy hunting-knife was quite as fiendish in its influence as the derringer. Its ugly, crooked blade, and strong, sharp point were very suggestive, and for a time I was almost afraid to touch the handle, lest the demon of suicide should overcome me. Still, in the climax of this fever, which might well have resulted in the suicide of another of the four, for it was evident that Henley and Tyck were also under the same influences that surrounded me day and night, the thought of burdening our friends with our dead bodies was the strongest inducement that stayed our hands. It is certain that if we had been situated where the disposal of our bodies would have been a matter of little or no difficulty—as, for example, on board ship—one or perhaps all three of us would have succumbed to the influence of the mania that possessed us.

It was on the Sunday forenoon—a grim, gray morning threatening a storm—following the fatal Thursday, that we met in the court-yard of the city hospital to bury poor Reiner.

The hideous barrenness of a Flemish burial-ground, even in bright, cheerful weather, is enough to crush the most buoyant spirits; it is indescribably oppressive and soul-sickening. The awful desolation of the place in the dreariness of that day will ever remain a horrid souvenir in my mind. Nature did not seem to weep, but to frown; and in the heavy air one felt a deep and solemn reproach. The soaked and dull atmosphere was stifling in its density, like the overloaded breath from some newly opened tomb. There was an army of felt but unseen spirits lurking in the ghostly quiet of the place, which the presence of a hundred mortals did not disturb. There was no breath of wind, and the settling of the snow and a faint, faint moan of the distant rushing tide made the silence more oppressive. The drip of the water from the drenched mosses on the brick walls; the faintest rustle of the wreaths of immortelles hung on every hideous black cross; the fall of one withered flower from the forgotten offerings of some friend of the buried dead—every sound at other times and in other places quite inaudible, broke upon that unearthly quiet with startling distinctness. The sound of our footsteps, as we followed the winding path to the fresh heap of earth in a remote corner, fell heavily on the thick air, and the high brick walls, mouldy and rotting in the sunless angles, gave a deep and unwilling echo. It was like treading the dark and skull-walled passages of the Catacombs without the grateful veil of a partial darkness. All that was mortal and subject to decay, all that was to our poor human understanding immortal and indestructible, seemed buried alike in this rigid, barren enclosure. Beyond? There was no beyond; the straight, barren walls on all sides, and the impenetrable murkiness of the gray vault that covered us, barred out the material and the spiritual world. Here was the end, here all was certain and defined—a narrow ditch, a few shovelfuls of earth, and nothing more that needed or invited explanation. There was no future, no waking from that sleep: all exit from that narrow and pitiless graveyard seemed forever closed. Such thoughts as these were, until then, strangers to us. Could it be the unextinguishable influence of that nerveless body that filled the place with the dread and uncongenial presence that urged us to accept for the time, then and there, the theories and convictions of the mind which once animated that cold and motionless mass?

The fresh, moist earth was piled on one side of the grave, and the workmen with their shovels stood near the heap as we filed up, and at a sign lowered the coffin into the grave. A Norwegian minister approached to conduct the services. He took his place apart from all, at the head of the grave, and began with the customary prayer in the Norwegian language. He was dressed in harmony with the day and scene. A long, black gown fell to the feet and was joined by a single row of thickly sewn buttons; a white band hung from his neck low down in front, and white wristbands half covered his gloved hands; a silk hat completed the costume. His face was of the peculiar, emotionless Northern type, perfectly regular in feature, with well-trimmed reddish-brown beard and hair, and small, unsympathetic gray eyes, and it bore an expression of congealed conviction in the severity of divine judgment. His prayer was long and earnest, and the discourse which followed was full of honest regret for the loss of our friend, but mainly charged with severe reproach against the wickedness of the suicide, the burden of the sermon being, “The wages of sin is death.” We stood there, shivering with the penetrating chill of the damp atmosphere, filled with the horrors of this acre of the dead, and listened patiently to the long discourse. In the very middle of the argument there was a sudden rustle near the head of the grave, a momentary confusion among those standing near the minister, and, to the great amazement and horror of Tyck, Henley, and myself, that black poodle, draggled but dignified, walked quietly to the edge of the pit as if he had been bidden to the funeral, and sat down there, midway between the minister and the little knot of mourners, eying first the living and then the dead with calm and portentous gravity. He seemed to pay the closest attention to the words of the discourse, and with an expression of intelligent triumph, rather than grief, cocked his wise little head to one side and eyed the minister as he dilated on the sin of suicide, and then looked solemnly down into the grave. His actions were so human and his expression so fiendishly exultant that to the three of us, who had previously made his acquaintance, his presence was an additional horror; among the rest it merely excited comment on the sagacity of the beast. There he sat through the whole of the services, and nothing could move him from his post.

At the close of the sermon, and after a short eulogy in Flemish delivered by one of us, the minister gave out the Norwegian hymn with this refrain:

The first part of the air is weird and Northern, and the last strain is familiar to us by the name of “Hebron.” The Norwegian words were significant and well-chosen for this occasion, very like the simple stanzas of our “Hebron.” The hymn is sad enough at all times; when tuned to the mournful drag of our untrained voices it seemed like the sighing of unshrived spirits.

As the sad measures wailed forth, the day seemed to grow colder and darker; a dreary wind rustled the dry branches of the stunted trees, and rattled the yellow wreaths of immortelles and the dry garlands and bouquets. The dog grew uneasy between the verses, and howled long and piteously, startling us all in our grief, and causing a dismal echo from the cold, bare walls that hemmed us in. At last the painfully long hymn was ended, immortelles were placed upon the coffin-lid, each one threw in a handful of earth, and we turned our faces towards the gate, away from death and desolation to dismal and melancholy life and our now distasteful occupation. With one last look into the enclosure, we passed out of the gate, closing it behind us. The dog was still at his post.

A rapid drive brought us in fifteen minutes to the Place de Meir, where we alighted and found to welcome us the same black poodle that we left at the grave. The cemetery of Kiel is at least two miles from the Place de Meir; yet the dog left it after we did, and, panting and covered with mud, was awaiting us at the latter place. He could have made his escape from the cemetery only by the aid of some one to open the heavy gate for him, and, considering this necessary delay, his appearance in the city before us was, to say the least, startling. He welcomed us cheerfully, but we gave him no encouragement. The inexplicable ubiquity of the beast horrified us too much to allow any desire for such a companion. As we separated and took three different roads, to my great relief he followed neither of us, but stood undecided which way to turn.

The circumstances attending the burial of poor Reiner and the events which followed tended to increase our disposition to imitate the questionable action of our friend; but the annual concours of the academy, which demanded the closest attention and the most severe work for nearly three months, counteracted all such evil tendencies, and by spring-time we laughed at the morbid fancies of the previous winter.

The evening after the funeral, on my way to the life class, I met the poodle again, and, in reply to his recognition, drove him away with my cane. Both Tyck and Henley related at the class a similar experience with the dog, which we had now come to look upon as a fiend in disguise. After this the meetings with the poodle were daily and almost hourly. He would quietly march into the hotel court-yard as we were at dinner; we would stumble over him on the stairs; at a cafÉ the garÇon would hunt him from the room; at the academy he would startle us, amuse the rest of the students, and enrage the professor by breaking the guard of the old surveillant, and rushing into the life class. He seemed to belong to no one and to have no home, and yet he was an attractive animal with his long, glossy coat, saucy ears and tail, and bright, intelligent eyes. We often endeavored to rid ourselves of him. Many times I tried my best to kill him, arming myself expressly with my heavy stick; but he avoided all my attacks, and always met me cheerfully at our next interview. At times he was morose and meditative. It used to be a theory of mine that at these seasons he was making up his mind which one of us he had better adopt as his master, declaring—only half in earnest, however—that the one whom the animal especially favored would be sure to meet poor Reiner’s fate. The months of January and February passed, and the poodle still haunted us. In the course of these dark months we repeatedly attempted to make friends with the dog, finding that we could not make an enemy of him, and hoped thus to disprove the imagined fatality of the beast or else to break the spell by our own wills. All efforts at conciliation failed; he would never enter even to take food the room where we three were alone, and would show signs of general recognition only, and those but sparingly, when we were together. He seemed content with simply watching us, and not desirous of further acquaintance. Yet, in the face of this mysterious behavior, I doubt very much if any one of us really believed that anything would come of our forebodings; for we began to speak of the dog at first quite in jest, and grew more serious only as we were impressed after the death of Reiner by the consistent impartiality of his fondness for our society, and by the unequalled persistency with which he haunted us wherever we went abroad.

We made inquiries about the dog at the house where old Reiner used to live, and diligently searched various localities, but we could not find out where he passed his nights, and we discovered only that he was known all about the town simply as Reiner’s dog, the story of his presence at the funeral having been repeated by some of those who noticed his actions at the grave. March came and went, and the dog had not yet taken his choice of us, and we began to be confident that he never would. But in one of the first warm days of spring we noticed his absence, and for a day or two saw nothing of him. One Sunday, after a fÊte-day when we three had not met as usual at the academy, a pure spring day, I received a short note from Henley, asking me to come to his room on the Place Verte, as he was unwell. I went immediately to his lodgings, and found him sitting up, but quite pale and with a changed expression on his face. I knew he had been suffering from a severe cold for some time, but we all had colds in the damp, unhealthful old academy. His noticeably increasing paleness was due, I had supposed, to the anxious labor and prolonged strain of the concours. In one instance when we had been for thirty-six hours shut up in a room with sealed doors and windows, threescore of us, together with as many large kerosene lamps and nearly the same number of foul pipes, with three large, red-hot cylinder stoves, and no exit allowed on any excuse, we were all more or less affected by the poisoned air and the long struggle with the required production. The idea, then, that there was anything serious the matter with Henley never entered my head as I saw him sitting there in his room; but his first words brought me to a realization of the case, and all the horror of that long winter and its one mournful event came back to me in a flash. His remark was significant. He simply said, “That dog is here.”

To be sure, the poodle was quietly sleeping near Henley’s easel, in the sun. After a few general remarks, my friend said to me, quite abruptly, as if he had made up his mind to come to the point at once:

“I thought I would send for you, old boy, to give you a souvenir or two. I am more seriously ill than you imagine. My brother will be here to-morrow; I shall return with him to England, and you and I shall probably meet no more.”

There was resignation in every word he uttered, and he was evidently convinced of the hopelessness of attempting to struggle with the disease, his languid efforts to throw it off not having in the least retarded its advance. I tried to prove to him the folly of the superstition about the dog, but it was useless. He quietly said that the doctor had assured him of the necessity of an immediate return to a warmer climate and to the care of his friends. Tyck, who had been sent for at the same time, came in shortly after, and was completely shaken by the strange fulfilment of our mysterious forebodings. We passed a sad hour in that little room, and took our leave only when we saw that Henley was fatigued with too much talking, for he began to cough frightfully, and could hardly speak above a whisper. He gave to each of us, with touching tenderness, a palette-knife—the best souvenirs we could have, he said, because they would be in our hands constantly—and we took our leave, promising to meet him on the boat the following day. We learned from the servant that the poodle had inhabited the cellar for several days, and that they had not been able to drive him away.

Tyck seemed perfectly dazed by the severity of Henley’s malady and the suddenness of his departure. Both of us avoided speaking of the dog, each fearing that his own experience with the unlucky acquaintance might follow that of our two companions. Tyck, I knew, was more subject to colds than the rest of us, for he had never been completely acclimated in Flanders, and he doubtless feared that one of the frequent slight attacks that troubled him might prove at last as serious as the illness that now threatened poor Henley. With Henley’s departure Antwerp would lose half its attraction for us, for since the death of old Reiner we three had been even more closely attached than before. Henley had lost some of his insular coldness and formality of manner, was daily assuming more and more the appearance and acquiring the free and easy habits of an art-student, and his unchanging good-nature, his stability of character, and his entertaining conversation made him the leader of our trio. During the exhausting months of the concours, and in face of the discouraging results of weeks of most energetic and nervous toil, he never lost his patience, but encouraged us by his superior strength of purpose and scorn of minor disappointments.

The next day we three met on board the Baron Osy just before the cables were cast off the quay. Henley was one of the last passengers to get aboard, and fortunately our parting was by necessity short. He was very weak, and evidently failed from hour to hour, for he could walk only with the support of his brother’s arm. He said good-by hopelessly but calmly, and we parted with scarcely another word. We felt that regrets were useless and words of encouragement vain, and that the only thing that remained to do was to accept his fate calmly, and as calmly await our own. There was not a shadow of hope that we would ever meet again, and I can never forget the far-off look in Henley’s face as he turned his eyes for an instant towards the swift, yellow current of the Scheldt, with the rich-hued sails, the fleecy spring clouds, and the gorgeously colored roofs of Saint Anneke reflected in its eddying surface. The cables were cast off and we hurried ashore. In the bustle and confusion a black poodle was driven off the plank by one of the stewards, but the crowd was so great and the noise and the tumult of the wharf-men so distracting, that it was impossible to see whether the dog remained on the boat or was put ashore. However, we saw him no more, and did not doubt that he went with Henley to London. In less than two weeks a letter from Henley’s brother announced the death of our friend from quick consumption. Nothing was said of the dog.

From that time Tyck was preoccupied; he was much alone, ceased to frequent the academy, and neither worked nor diverted himself: it was plain that he needed change. Antwerp, at the best a cheerless town, gay on the surface, perhaps, because its people are as thoughtless and improvident as children, but full of misery and well-concealed wretchedness, grew hateful to us both.

Suddenly Tyck announced his purpose of going to Italy, and I resolved to break my camp as well, make an artistic tour of the East, and meet my friend in Rome in the autumn. We divided our canvases and easels among the rest of the fellows, rolled up our studies, and with the color-box, knapsack, and travelling-rug were prepared in a day to leave the scene of our sad experiences. It was with feelings of great relief and satisfaction that we saw the red roofs of Antwerp disappear behind the fortifications as the train carried us southward.

II.

Eight months after Tyck and I parted at Brussels, I arrived in Rome. Sharing, as I did, the general ignorance in regard to the severity of the Italian winters, I was surprised to find the weather bitterly cold. It was the day before Christmas, and a breeze that would chill the bones swept the deserted streets. After three months’ idling in the East, paddling in the Golden Horn, dreamily watching from the hills of Smyrna the far-off islands of the Grecian Archipelago, and sleeping in the sun on the rocks at PirÆus, Italy seemed as cold and barren as the shores of Scandinavia. It is a popular mistake to winter in Italy. The West of England, the South of France, and many sections of our own country are far preferable. It is not to be denied that Italy can be thoroughly enjoyed only in the warm months. Even in the hottest season, Americans find Naples, Rome, and Florence less uncomfortable than Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. Immediately on my arrival Tyck came to meet me at the hotel, and we spent a happy Christmas Eve, discussing the thousand topics that arise when two intimate friends meet after a separation like our own. Tyck was in better health and spirits than I had ever known him to be in before, and to all appearances Italian air agreed with him. In the course of the evening he gave me an invitation to make one of a breakfast-party that was to celebrate Christmas in his studio the next day, and the invitation was accompanied with the request to bring eatables and liquids enough to satisfy my own appetite on that occasion—a Bohemian fashion of giving dinner-parties to which we were no strangers. Accordingly, the next morning at eleven o’clock we were to meet again in Tyck’s quarters.

The studio was in the fifth story of a large block not far from the Porta del Popolo, and looked out upon a large portion of the city, the view embracing the Pincio and St. Peter’s, Monte Mario, and the Quirinal. The entrance on the street was dismal and prison-like. A long, dark corridor led back to a small court at the bottom of a great pit formed by the walls of the crowded houses, and the stones of the pavement were flooded with the drippings from the buckets of all the neighborhood, as they slid up and down the wire guys leading into the antique well in one corner, and rattled and splashed until they were drawn up by an unseen hand far above in the maze of windows and balconies—an ingenious and simple way of drawing water, quite common in Rome. From this sunless court-yard a broad, musty staircase twisted and turned capriciously up past narrow, gloomy passages to the upper floors of the house. At the fourth story began a narrow wooden staircase, always perfumed with the odors of the adjacent kitchens; and it grew narrower and steeper and more crooked until it met a little dark door at the very top, bearing the name of Tyck. The suite of rooms which Tyck occupied made up one of those mushroom-like wooden stories that are lightly stuck on the top of substantial stone or brick buildings. They add to the beauty of the silhouette, but detract from the dignity of the architectural effect, and look like the cabin of a wrecked ship flung upon the rocks. From the outside, quaint little windows, pretty hanging gardens, or an airy loggia make the place look cheerful and cosy. Within, one feels quite away from the world; far up beyond neighbors and enclosing walls, tossed on a sea of roofs, and with a broad sweep of the horizon on every side. Such a perch is as attractive as it is difficult to reach, and offers to the artist the advantages of light, quiet, and perfect freedom. Tyck’s rooms were three in number. A narrow corridor led past the door of the store-room to the studio—a large, square room with a great window on the north side and smaller ones with shutters on the east and west. From the studio a door opened into the chamber, in turn connected with the store-room. Thus there was a public and a private entrance to the studio.

The Christmas breakfast had more than ordinary significance: it was to be the occasion of the presentation of Tyck’s household to his artist friends. This, perhaps, needs explanation. At the time of our departure from Antwerp, Tyck was engaged to be married to a young lady, the daughter of a Flemish merchant, and there was every prospect of a wedding within a year. After he had been absent two or three months her letters ceased to come, and Tyck learned from a friend that the thrifty father of the girl had found a match more desirable from a mercenary point of view, and had obliged his daughter to break engagement number one in order to enter into a new relation. Tyck, after some months of despondency, at last made an alliance with a Jewish girl of the working class, and it was at the Christmas breakfast that Lisa was to be presented for the first time to the rest of the circle. When I entered the studio there were already a good many fellows present. The apartment was a picture in itself; and a long dining-table placed diagonally across the room, bearing piles of crockery and a great piÈce montÉe of evergreen and oranges, and surrounded by a unique and motley assemblage of chairs, did not detract from the picturesqueness of the interior.

As studios go, this would not, perhaps, have been considered luxurious or of extraordinary interest, but it had a character of its own. Two sides of the room were hung with odd bits of old tapestry and stray squares of stamped leather, matched together to make an irregular patchwork harmonious in tone and beautifully rich in color. In the corner were bows and arrows, spears, and other weapons, brought from Java, a branch or two of palm, and great reeds from the Campagna with twisted and shrivelled leaves, yellow and covered with dust. Studies of heads and small sketches were tucked away between the bits of tapestry and leather, and thus every inch of these walls was covered. On another wall was a book-shelf with a confused pile of pamphlets and paper-covered books, and under this hung a number of silk and satin dresses, various bits of rich drapery, a coat or two, and a Turkish fez. The remaining wall, and the two narrow panels on either side of the great window, were completely covered with studies of torsos, drawings from the nude, academy heads, sketches of animals and landscapes, together with a shelf of trinkets, a skeleton, and a plaster death-mask of a friend hung with a withered laurel-wreath. Quaint old chairs, bits of gilded stage furniture, racks of portfolios, a small table or two covered with the odds and ends of draperies, papers, sketches, the accumulation of months, filled the corners and spread confusion into the middle of the room. Three or four easels huddled together under the light, holding stray panels and canvases and half-finished pictures, a lay-figure—that stiff and angular caricature of the human form—and a chair or two loaded with brushes, color-box, and palettes, witnessed that tools were laid aside to give room for the table that filled every inch of vacant space. In one corner was an air-tight stove, and this was piled up with dishes and surrounded by great tin boxes, whence an appetizing steam issued forth, giving a hint of the good things awaiting us. The bottles were beginning to form a noble array on the table, and as often as a new guest appeared, a servant with a porte-manger and a couple of bottles would contribute to the army of black necks and add to the breastwork of loaded dishes that flanked the stove. Tyck was in his element, welcoming heartily and with boyish enthusiasm every arrival, and leading the shout of joy at the sight of a fat bundle or a heavy weight of full bottles. By eleven o’clock every one was on hand, and there was an embarrassment of riches in the eating and drinking line. Before sitting down at the table—there were eighteen of us—we made a rule that each one should in turn act as waiter and serve with his own hand the dishes he had brought, the intention being to divide the accumulated stock of dishes into a great many different courses. French was chosen as the language of the day.

While we were discussing the question of language, Lisa came in and was presented to us all in turn, impressing us very favorably. She was slight, but not thin, with dark hair, large brown eyes, and a transparent pink-and-white complexion—a fine type of a Jewess. She took the place of honor at Tyck’s right hand, and we sat down in a very jolly mood.

The menu of that breakfast would craze a French cook, and the arrangement of the courses was a work of great difficulty, involving much general discussion. The trattorie of Rome had been ransacked for curious and characteristic national dishes; every combination of goodies that ingenious minds could suggest was brought, and plain substantials by no means failed. In the hors d'oeuvre, we had excellent fresh caviare, the contribution of a Russian; Bologna sausage and nibbles of radish; and, to finish, pÂtÉ de foie gras. Soup À la jardiniÈre was announced, and was almost a failure at the start-off, because one very important aid to the enjoyment of soup, the spoons, had been forgotten by the contributor. A long discussion as to the practicability of leaving the soup to the end of the meal, meanwhile ordering spoons to be brought, terminated in the employment of extra glasses in place of spoons and soup-plates. Then all varieties of fish followed in a rapid succession of small courses. Tiny minnows fried in delicious olive-oil; crabs and crawfish cooked in various ways; Italian oysters, small, thin, and coppery in flavor; canned salmon from the Columbia River; baccalÀ and herrings from the North Sea; broad, gristly flaps from the body of the devil-fish, the warty feelers purple and suggestive of the stain of sepia and of Victor Hugo—all these, and an abundance of each, were passed around. An immense joint of roast beef, with potatoes, contributed by an Englishman; a leg of mutton, by a Scotchman; a roast pig, from a Hungarian; the potted meat of Australia, and the tasteless manzo of Italy, formed the solid course. Next we devoured a whole flock of juicy larks with crisp skins, pigeons in pairs, ducks from the delta of the Tiber, a turkey brought by an American, pheasants from a Milanese, squash stuffed with meat and spices, and a globe of polenta from a Venetian. At this point in the feast there were cries of quarter, but none was given. An English plum-pudding of the unhealthiest species, with flaming sauce; a pie or two strangely warped and burned in places, from the ignorance of the Italian cook or the bad oven; pots of jelly and marmalade, fruit mustard, stewed pears, and roasted chestnuts, ekmekataÏf and havlÁh from a Greek, a profusion of fruits of all kinds, were offered, and at last coffee was served to put in a paragraph. The delicate wines of Frascati and Marino, the light and dark Falernian, a bottle of Tokay, one of VÖslau, thick red wine of Corfu, and flasks of the ordinary Roman mixture—a little more than water, a little less than wine—Capri rosso and bianco, Bordeaux and Burgundy, good English ale and porter, Vienna beer, American whiskey, and Dutch gin, Alkermes, Chartreuse, and Greek mastic, made, all told, a wine-list for a king, and presented a rank of arguments to convert a prohibitionist. This was no orgy that I am describing, simply a jolly breakfast for eighteen Bohemians of all nationalities—a complex, irregular affair, but for that reason all the more delightful.

When we were well along in the bill of fare, a little incident occurred which put me out of the mood for further enjoyment of the breakfast, and for the rest of the day my position was that of silent spectator, watching the amusements with an expression not calculated to encourage sport. To begin with, I was unusually sensitive to nervous shocks, from the fact that my first impression of Rome had been intensely disagreeable. I found myself in a strangely exciting atmosphere, and subject to unpleasant influences. The first night passed in Rome was crowded with visions, and I cannot recall a period of twenty-four hours during my residence in that city that has not its unpleasant souvenir of strange hallucinations, wonderful dreams, or some shock to my nerves. The meeting with Tyck was doubtless the occasion of my visions and restlessness on the night before the Bohemian breakfast. The events of the previous winter in Antwerp came freshly to my mind; I lived over again that dark season of horrors, and the atmosphere of Rome nourished the growth of similar strange fancies. There was, however, in my train of thoughts on Christmas Eve no foreboding that I can recall, no prophetic fear of a continuance of the strange relations with that black poodle which had already taken away the best half of our circle. It needed little, nevertheless, to put me in a state of mind very similar to that which tortured me for months in Antwerp.

But to return to the breakfast. While we were at the table a hired singer and guitar-player, a young girl of sixteen or seventeen years, sang Italian popular songs and performed instrumental pieces. She had nearly exhausted her list when she began to sing the weird, mournful song of Naples, “Palomella,” at that time quite the rage, but since worn threadbare, and its naÏve angles and depressions polished down to the meaningless monotony of a popular ditty. We heard a dog howl in the sleeping-room as the singer finished the ballad, and Lisa rose to open the door. My seat on Tyck’s left brought me quite near the door, and I turned on my chair to watch the entrance of the animal. A black poodle, as near as I could judge the exact counterpart of the Flemish dog, quietly walked into the room, evidently perfectly at home. My first calm reflection was that it was an hallucination, a mental reproduction of one of the grim pictures of the past winter; I could not believe my own vision, and it was some time before I came to realize the fact that my senses were not deceived. I was about to ask Tyck if he had noticed in the dog any curious resemblance to our self-appointed companion in Antwerp, when he turned, and, as I thought then, with a lingering touch of the old superstitious fear in his voice, said: “You’ve noticed the dog; he belongs to Lisa. When he first came here, a month ago, I was horrified to find in him the image of our Flemish friend. Lisa laughed me out of my fears, saying that the animal had been in the family for six months or more, and at last I began to look upon him as a harmless pup, and to wonder only at the strange coincidence.” But I could not turn the affair into a joke or forget for a moment past events, now recalled so vividly to my mind. This was the third time that a black poodle had taken a liking to one of us, and two out of the three attachments had already proved fatal to the human partner. It was not by any means clear that the same dog played these different renderings of one part, but to all appearance it was the identical poodle. If in two cases this friendship of the dog for his self-chosen master had proved fatal, it was but a natural inference that the third attachment would terminate in a similar manner. But Tyck was in better health than ever before, notwithstanding the companionship of the dog. Was not this a proof of the folly of my superstition? I asked myself. Reasons were not wanting to disprove the soundness of my logic. It was undoubtedly true that stranger and more wonderful coincidences had happened, and nothing had come of them, and it was undeniable that the imagination might distort facts to such a degree that coincidences would be suspected where none existed. If it were only a coincidence, fears were childish. And the dog manifested no particular friendship for Tyck; he belonged to Lisa, and seemed to take no special notice of any one else.

The dÉjeuner went on without further interruption, and the guitar girl drummed away until the table was cleared. We were not at a loss for entertainments after the feast was ended. Tyck’s costumes were drawn upon, and a Flemish musician sang a costume duet with a Walloon sculptor, one being laced up in a blue satin ball-dress, and the other staggering under the weight of a janissary’s uniform. Later on there was a dancing concours, in which the Indian war-dance, the English jig, the negro walk-around, the tarantella, the Flemish reuske, and the Hungarian csÁrdÁs each had its nimble-footed performers. The scene was worth putting upon canvas. The confusion of quaint and rare trinkets, the abundance of color-bits, and the picturesque groups of figures in all the costumes that could be improvised for the dance or the song—a museum of bric-À-brac and a carnival of characters—all this made a tableau vivant of great richness and interest.

About the middle of the afternoon the entertainment began to flag a little, and the moment there was a lull in the sport some one proposed a trip to Ponte Molle. The vote was immediately taken and carried, and we marched out to the Piazza del Popolo and engaged an omnibus for the rest of the day.

The straggling suburb outside the Porta del Popolo was lively with pleasure-seeking Romans. The wine-shops were full of sad-eyed peasants and weary, careworn laborers; all the mournful character of a Roman merry-making was unusually prominent on this cheerless holiday, and the cloaked natives chatted as solemnly as if they were mourners at a funeral. Roman festivities are, in general, not calculated to divert the participants to a dangerous extent. Wine-drinking is the chief amusement; and even under the enlivening influences of his potations the Roman rarely loses his habitual seriousness of manner, but bears himself to the end of the orgy as if he expected every moment to be called upon to answer for the sins of his ancestors. As we drove along the straight, broad road that raw afternoon, we met numberless carts and omnibuses filled with laborers returning from the wine-shops in the Campagna; the sidewalks were crowded with people on their way to and from the trattorie near the Tiber; and scarcely a song was heard, rarely a laugh sounded above the rattle of the wheels. The natives were making a business of amusement, and formed a staid and sober procession, on an occasion when in Germany or Belgium the frolics and noisy merriment of the people would have known no bounds short of the limit of physical endurance. We were probably regarded as escaped maniacs because we persisted in breaking the voiceless confusion by our hearty Flemish songs. We left the omnibus in the yard of a trattoria at some distance out in the Campagna, and strolled over the hills for an hour, watching the dark, cold mountains and the broad, sad-tinted waste spread out before us. The solemn beauty of the Campagna is always impressive; under a gray sky it assumes a sombre and mournful aspect. To the north of the city, the low, flat-topped hills combine in a peculiar way to form silhouettes of great nobleness of character and simplicity of line. They are the changeless forms that endure like the granite cliffs, monumental in their grandeur. When moving shadows of the clouds form purple patches across these hills, and the dull gray of the turf comes into occasional relief in a spot of strong sunlight, the scene is one of unique and matchless beauty—a heroic landscape, with wonderful vigor and dignity of line and extraordinary delicacy of tone. That afternoon the dog, which had accompanied Tyck on the excursion, furnished us our chief amusement. We tossed sticks down the steep gravel banks, to watch his lithe black form struggle through the brambles, seize the bit, and return it to us. He, poor animal, had probably been shut up within the walls of Rome longer than the rest of the party, and entered into the outdoor frolics with even more zest than his human companions. Below the trattoria there was a narrow brook bridged by a rail, and we tried to get the poodle to walk this narrow path, but with no success. Tyck at last made the attempt, to encourage the dog, but on his way back he slipped and wet his feet and ankles thoroughly. Most of us thought this accident of not the least importance, but one or two of the old residents advised a return to the wine-shop, hinting of a possible serious illness in consequence of the wetting. At the trattoria Tyck dried himself at the large open fire in the kitchen, and we thought no more of it. The old Porta del Popolo answered our chorus with a welcoming echo as we drove in, shortly after dark, and mingled with the shivering crowd hurrying to their homes. Our Christmas had at least been a merry one to the most of us, but I could not forget the incident of the dog; and as I walked through the streets to my cheerless room a strange dread gradually took entire possession of me in spite of my reason.

For a day or two, that least amusing of all occupations, studio-hunting, kept me busy from morning till night, and I saw none of the breakfast-party. It was beginning to surprise me that Tyck did not make his appearance, when I had a call from Lisa, bearing a message from him, saying he was slightly unwell and wanted me to come and see him. I lost no time in complying with his request. On my way to his room the same old dread, stifled for a while in the busy search for rooms, came back with all its force, and I already began to suffer the first agonies of grief at the loss of my friend. For, although the message was hopeful enough, it came at a time when it seemed the first sign of the fulfilment of my forebodings, and from that moment I looked upon Tyck as lost to us. Not pretending to myself that it was an excusable weakness on my part to become the victim of what would generally be declared a morbid state of the imagination; reasoning all the while that the weather, the peculiar, tomb-like atmosphere of Rome, our previous experience in Antwerp, and our long absence from the distractions and worldliness of a civilized society would have caused this state of mind in healthier organizations than my own; I still could not help thinking of my friend as already in the clutch of death, and soon to be numbered as the third lost from our little circle, while the fourth was still to wait.

Tyck was in bed when I entered his chamber. There was a fresh glow deep in his brown cheek, and his eyes seemed to me brighter than usual; still there was no visible sign of a dangerous illness, and my reason laughed at my fears. He complained of dizziness, headache, pains in the back, and coughed at intervals. His manner showed that his mind was troubled, and from Lisa I learned that he had not yet received the expected remittance for the sale of his last pictures sent to London. The winter was severe and fuel expensive; models were awaiting payment, and the rent-day was drawing near. I gave Lisa all the money I had with me, and charged her to keep me posted as to the wants of the household, if by any bad fortune Tyck should be obliged to keep his room for any length of time. She afterwards told me that later in the day several friends called, suspected the state of affairs, and each contributed according to his purse—always without the knowledge of the sufferer.

Every day after that, I passed a portion of the daylight in Tyck’s room. His cough gradually grew more violent, and in a day or two he became seriously ill with high fever. The doctor, a spare, wise-looking German, of considerable reputation as a successful practitioner in fever cases, was called that day and afterwards made more frequent visits than the length of our purses would warrant. On the third or fourth day he decided that the disease was typhoid fever, and commenced a severe and to us inexperienced nurses a harsh treatment, dosing continually with quinine and blistering the extremities. Before the end of a week Tyck fell into long spells of delirium, and recognized his friends only at intervals. His tongue was black, and protruded from his mouth, and between his fits of coughing he could at last only whisper a few words in Italian. We had been in the habit of conversing at discretion in English, French, Flemish, or German; talking always on art questions in French, telling stories in the picturesque Flemish patois, and reserving the German and English languages for more solemn conversation. Tyck would frequently attempt to use one of these languages when he wished to speak with me during his illness, aware of my slight acquaintance with Italian, and it was most painful to witness his struggles with an English or French sentence. The words seemed too rasping for his tender throat and blistered tongue; the easy enunciation of the Italian vowels gave him no pain, and in a sigh he could whisper a whole sentence.

When at last Lisa was quite worn out with nursing, and there was need of more skilful and experienced hands to administer the medicines and perform the thousand duties of a sick-room, the doctor advised us to make application at a convent for a sister to come and watch at night. We did so, and on the evening of the same day a cheerful, home-like little body, in the stiffest of winged bonnets, climbed the long stairs and took immediate possession of the sick-room, putting things into faultless order in a very few moments. Her first step was to banish the dog to a neighboring studio, and I awaited her entrance into the painting-room with some anxiety. The long table had been removed, but otherwise the studio remained just the same as it was on the day of the feast. A regiment of bottles was drawn up near the window; various tell-tale dishes, broken glasses, and other dÉbris cluttered the corner near where the stove stood, and I was sure that a lecture on the sin of the debauchery which had brought my friend to a sick-bed awaited me the moment the sister saw these proofs of our worldliness. She trotted out into the studio at last, in the course of her busy preparation for the night; and then, instead of bursting forth with a reproof, she covered her face with her hands, turned about, and walked out of the house. I, of course, followed her and begged for an explanation. She hesitated long, but finally with some difficulty said she could not stay in a room where such pictures decorated the walls, and before she would consent to return she must be assured of their removal or concealment. I hastened up, covered all the academy studies with bits of newspaper; and the sister returned and went on with her duties as if nothing had happened. So the expected lecture was never delivered. In the sight of the greater enormity of academy studies, she clearly thought it useless to lecture on the appetite.

Few days elapsed after the sister took charge of the sick-room before we were all rejoiced at an improvement in Tyck. He grew better rapidly, and in two weeks was able to sit up in bed and talk to us. Though we were full of joy at his apparent speedy recovery, there was always a bitterness in the thought that the fatal relapse might be expected at every moment, and this shadow hung over us even in the most hopeful hours. The sister gave up her charge, and as Tyck grew better day by day, Lisa came to act as sole nurse and companion, although we made daily visits to the sick-room. The month of January passed, and Carnival approached. Tyck was able to have his clothes put on, and to move around the room a little. The doctor made infrequent and irregular visits, and but for the fear of a relapse would have ceased to come altogether.

The morning of the first day of Carnival week, I was awakened while it was still dark by the ringing of my door-bell, and lay in bed for a while undecided whether it was not a dream that had roused me. My studio and apartment were of a very bogyish character, located at the top of a house on the Tiber, completely shut away from the world, and full of dream-compelling influences that lurked in the dingy and long-disused bedroom with its worn and faded furniture, and filled the spacious studio and the musty little salon with an oppressive presence, which did not vanish in the brightest days nor in the midst of the liveliest assembly that ever gathered there. So it never astonished me to be awakened by some unaccountable noise, or by the mental conviction that there was some disturbance in the crowded atmosphere. When I was aroused that dark, drizzly morning, I awaited the second pull of the bell before I summoned courage enough to pass through the shadowy salon and the lofty studio, with its ghostly lay-figure and plaster casts, like pale phantoms in the dim light of a wax taper, and open the great door that led into the narrow corridor. A slender form wrapped in a shawl entered the studio, and Lisa stood there, pale with fright, her great brown eyes drowned in tears, shrinking from the invisible terrors that seemed to pursue her. She whispered that Tyck was worse, and asked me to go for the doctor. I led her back to Tyck’s room, and in an hour the doctor was there.

The details of that last illness are painful in the extreme. The sister was not in attendance, it having been decided by the superior that artists’ studios were places whither the duties of the sisterhood did not call its members, and so Lisa’s mother came and did her best to fill, in a rough sort of way, the delicate office of nurse. On the last day of Carnival, little suspecting that the end of my friend was near, I was occupied in my own studio, until nearly dark, and just as the sport was at its height I struggled through the crowd and reached Tyck’s studio, white with confetti and flour, and in a state of mind hardly fitted for the sick-room. In the studio two doctors sat in consultation, and their serious faces, with the frightened look in Lisa’s eyes, told me the sad story at once. They had decided that Tyck must die, and made a last examination just after I entered. They raised him in bed, thumped his poor back, pulled out his swollen tongue, and felt of his tender scalp, burned with fever and frozen with a sack of ice. The group at the bedside, so picturesquely impressive, will always remain in my memory like the souvenir of some gloomy old picture. Lisa’s mother was seated on the back of the bed, raising Tyck like a sick child, his limp arms dangling over her shoulders and his head drooping against her cheek. To the right the slight and graceful form of Lisa, holding the earthen lamp; one doctor bending over to listen at the bared back, the focus of the dim light; the other doctor solemn and motionless, a dark silhouette against the bed and the wall beyond. The examination only proved the truth of the decision just reached, and it was then announced for the first time that the real malady was lung-fever, with the not infrequently accompanying first symptoms of typhoid. A few moments later one or two young artists dropped in, learned the sad news, and went away to warn the rest of the friends. At eight o’clock we were all in the studio, and after a hushed and hasty discussion as to whether or not a priest should be called in this last hour, the Catholic friends were overruled, and it was decided to consult no spiritual adviser. Tyck, meanwhile, was scarcely able to talk. One by one the fellows came to his bedside, were recognized, and went away. I alone stayed in the studio, waiting, waiting. The doctor was to come at half-past nine, and the fellows had promised to return again at ten.

For a long hour we sat in silence, Lisa and I, and watched the approach of death. The mother, completely exhausted, lay on the bare floor near the stove, as motionless as a corpse; the dim light reflected from the sick-room transformed the draperies into mysterious shapes, and made the lay-figure look vaporous and spectral. Frequent fits of violent, suffocating cough would call us to the bedside, and after a severe struggle Tyck would for a moment throw off the clutch of the malady and breathe again. He was in agony to speak with me, but was unable to. I guessed part of his wishes, repeated them in Flemish, and he made a signal of assent when I was right. In this way he communicated certain directions about his affairs, and I promised to see Lisa provided for and all his business properly settled. But there was something more he was anxious to tell, and he continued to the last his vain struggle to express it.

The stillness of the studio in the intervals between the spasms of suffocation was painfully broken, as the long hour passed, by his heavy breathing and by the stifled sobs of the poor girl, who, at last, cried herself to sleep, exhausted by her watching. From outside, a dog’s mournful howl, breaking into a short, spasmodic bark, came up at intervals, and I could see that this sound disturbed the sufferer, probably recalling to his waning faculties the history of the dog that had so haunted us. From the street the chorus of the maskers came floating to us, sounding hollow and far away, like the chant of a distant choir in some great cathedral. Occasionally a carriage rumbled over the rough pavement, the deep sound echoing through the deserted court-yard and up the long, dreary stairways. It was within a few moments of the doctor’s expected visit that a spasm more violent than any previous one called me to the bedside. We had long since stopped the medicine, and nothing remained to do but to ease the sufferer over the chasm as gently as possible. He did not seem at all anxious to live, and in the agonies of the suffocation there was no fear in those dark eyes that rolled in their hollow sockets. I raised him in bed, and at last, after the most prolonged fight, he caught his breath, opened his eyes, turned towards me, and said plainly in English, “All right, old boy.” Then he relapsed into a comatose state and never spoke again. The doctor found him rapidly sinking, and another spasm came on while he was feeling the pulse. The patient recovered from it only to pass into another and more protracted one, at the end of which he sighed twice and was dead. For a second or two after the last deep breath his face had all the fever-flush and the look of life, but almost instantly he fell over towards me, changed beyond recognition. The wave of death had passed over us, carrying with it the last trace of life that lingered in the face of my friend, and a ghastly pallor crept over his cheeks, transforming him that I loved into an unrecognizable, inert thing. I turned away and never saw that face again, although they told me it was nobly beautiful in its Egyptian, changeless expression. That pause of an instant, while death was asserting its power, impressed me strangely—and this was no new experience for me. In that pause, when time seemed to stand still, something urged me to raise my eyes in confident expectation of seeing the spirit as it left the body. Even my heated imagination, to which I was ready to charge much that was inexplicable in my experience, did not produce an image, but instead, where the wall should have been I seemed to look into space, into a wide, wide distance. An awful vacancy, an infinity of emptiness, yawned before me, and I looked down to meet the fixed expression of that changed face. For that moment there was no lingering presence of my friend that I could feel; in that short struggle he had separated himself entirely from us and from the place he used to fill with his charming presence. In the chamber of death there was no adumbration of the life that once flourished there, of the soul that had just fled. And so I thought only of burying the body and providing for poor Lisa.

The rest of the fellow-painters came a few moments after it was all over, and received the news with surprise. Lisa still slept, and we did not wake her. I remained in the studio all night, and in the morning the formalities of the police notification were gone through with, and the preparations made for the funeral. In the studio, unchanged in every respect from the day when Tyck put his brushes in his palette and laid it upon a chair, we held a meeting to decide upon the funeral ceremonies. Lisa was completely broken down by grief and exhaustion, and, with her mother and the dog, who joyfully occupied his old place by the stove and disputed the entrance of every one, lived in the studio and the store-room.

On Sunday morning we buried our friend in the Protestant cemetery. Arriving at the little house in the enclosure, we found the coffin there, with the undertaker, Lisa, her mother, and the dog. An hour later an English minister came and conducted the ceremonies in a cold, hurried manner; but perhaps the services were quite as satisfactory, after all, because his language was unintelligible to the majority of those present. We stood shivering in a circle around the coffin until the services were over, and then bore the burden to the grave, dug deep near the wall in a picturesque nook under a ruined tower—a fit monument to our friend. Lisa and her mother stood a little apart, holding the dog, while we put the body in the grave, and a cold sun shone down upon us, quite as cheerless and as unsympathetic as the dull, lowering clouds of that day in Flanders a year before. After the customary handful of earth had been thrown, we turned away and separated, for the living had no sympathy with each other after the cold formality of the funeral. As I strolled across the field in the direction of Monte Testaccio, I looked back once only. There, on the mound of fresh earth, stood the dog, and Lisa was bending over to arrange a wreath of immortelles.

After the sale of Tyck’s effects, which brought a comfortable little sum to Lisa, I left Rome, now unbearable, and sought the distractions of busy Naples. Later, with warm weather, I settled in a solitary nest in Venice, where the waves of the lagoon lapped my door-step. The distressed cries of a dog called me to the water door, one rainy morning, while I was writing a part of this very narrative, and I pulled out of the water a half-drowned, shaggy black dog. With some anxiety I assisted the poor animal to dry his fur, and found, instead of my old enemy, a harmless shaggy terrier, who rests his dainty nose on the paper as I write.

And so the fourth still waits.