Don Juan. Aloud he added, "Yes, dearest father,
yes; you shall live, of course, as long as I live, for your image will
be for ever in my heart."

"It is not that kind of life that I mean," said the old noble, summoning
all his strength to sit up in bed; for a thrill of doubt ran through
him, one of those suspicions that come into being under a dying man's
pillow. "Listen, my son," he went on, in a voice grown weak with that
last effort, "I have no more wish to give up life than you to give up
wine and mistresses, horses and hounds, and hawks and gold----"

"I can well believe it," thought the son; and he knelt down by the bed
and kissed Bartolommeo's cold hands. "But, father, my dear father," he
added aloud, "we must submit to the will of God."

"I am God!" muttered the dying man.

"Do not blaspheme!" cried the other, as he saw the menacing expression
on his father's face. "Beware what you say; you have received extreme
unction, and I should be inconsolable if you were to die before my eyes
in mortal sin."

"Will you listen to me?" cried Bartolommeo, and his mouth twitched.

Don Juan held his peace; an ugly silence prevailed. Yet above the
muffled sound of the beating of the snow against the windows rose the
sounds of the beautiful voice and the viol in unison, far off and faint
as the dawn. The dying man smiled.

"Thank you," he said, "for bringing those singing voices and the music,
a banquet, young and lovely women with fair faces and dark tresses, all
the pleasure of life! Bid them wait for me; for I am about to begin life
anew."

"The delirium is at its height," said Don Juan to himself.

"I have found out a way of coming to life again," the speaker went on.
"There, just look in that table drawer, press the spring hidden by the
griffin, and it will fly open."

"I have found it, father."

"Well, then, now take out a little phial of rock crystal."

"I have it."

"I have spent twenty years in----" but even as he spoke the old man felt
how very near the end had come, and summoned all his dying strength
to say, "As soon as the breath is out of me, rub me all over with that
liquid, and I shall come to life again."

"There is very little of it," his son remarked.

Though Bartolommeo could no longer speak, he could still hear and see.
When those words dropped from Don Juan, his head turned with appalling
quickness, his neck was twisted like the throat of some marble statue
which the sculptor had condemne