d'Aubremel, God does not will that you should die, and I,
his servant, am sent to tell you his decree. You have been cruel
and covetous--you have wished an innocent man's death, and his
death caused that of a multitude of victims to the barbarous
passions of a great western nation. Man's life must be sacred
for every man. God only can take what he gave. Live, then, if you
would not add a great crime to a great error. And if forgiveness
from one dead can restore in part your strength and courage to
endure, Felix, I forgive you."

The vision vanished.

Felix religiously obeyed the instructions of Li, and consecrated
his life by a vow to the relief of human misery wherever he
found it. He devoted Richard Malden's vast fortune to founding
charitable establishments. Ernestine Montmorot would never
consent to see him again.

Two years ago, yielding to an impulse easy to understand, he
requested the English consul at Chiusang to make inquiries as
to the family of Li, who might perhaps be suffering in poverty.
Nothing more could be discovered than that the gracious sovereign
of the Middle Kingdom had confiscated the property of Li's
family, that his wife had died of sorrow, in misery, and that
his son, Li, having taken the liberty to complain of the glorious
emperor's severity, suffered death by the bowstring, as is proper
and reasonable in all well-governed states.

* * * * *

[Illustration: MOTHER IS HERE!--DEIKER.]

MOTHER IS HERE!--A little fawn in the clutches of a fox bleats
loudly for help. The mother appears quickly on the scene, and
Renard retires, foiled and chagrined at the loss of his dinner.
He stays not upon the order of his going, but goes at once. The
artist Deiker is a well-known German painter, whose success with
these pictures of animal life ranks him with such men as Beckmann
and Hammer, whose names are familiar to the friends of _THE
ALDINE_.

_A TROPIC FOREST._

Trees lifted to the skies their stately heads,
Tufted with verdure, like depending plumage,
O'er stems unknotted, waving to the wind:
Of these in graceful form, and simple beauty,
The fruitful cocoa and the fragrant palm
Excelled the wilding daughters of the wood,
That stretched unwieldly their enormous arms,
Clad with luxuriant foliage, from the trunk,
Like the old eagle feathered to the heel;
While every fibre, from the lowest root
To the last leaf upon the topmost twig