orward in this flood of beams. He was unconscious of
fatigue, or nearly so--would, have been wholly so but for the return by
and by of that same dim shadow, or shadows, still rising and darting
across every motion of the fancy that grouped again the actors in last
night's scenes; not such shadows as naturally go with sunlight to make
it seem brighter, but a something which qualified the light's perfection
and the air's freshness.

Wherefore, resolved: that he would compound his life, from this time
forward, by a new formula: books, so much; observation, so much; social
intercourse, so much; love--as to that, time enough for that in the
future (if he was in love with anybody, he certainly did not know it);
of love, therefore, amount not yet necessary to state, but probably
(when it should be introduced), in the generous proportion in which
physicians prescribe _aqua_. Resolved, in other words, without ceasing
to be Frowenfeld the studious, to begin at once the perusal of this
newly found book, the Community of New Orleans. True, he knew he should
find it a difficult task--not only that much of it was in a strange
tongue, but that it was a volume whose displaced leaves would have to be
lifted tenderly, blown free of much dust, re-arranged, some torn
fragments laid together again with much painstaking, and even the
purport of some pages guessed out. Obviously, the place to commence at
was that brightly illuminated title-page, the ladies Nancanou.

As the sun rose and diffused its beams in an atmosphere whose
temperature had just been recorded as 50 deg. F., the apothecary stepped
half out of his shop-door to face the bracing air that came blowing upon
his tired forehead from the north. As he did so, he said to himself:

"How are these two Honore Grandissimes related to each other, and why
should one be thought capable of attempting the life of Agricola?"

The answer was on its way to him.

There is left to our eyes but a poor vestige of the picturesque view
presented to those who looked down the rue Royale before the garish day
that changed the rue Enghien into Ingine street, and dropped the 'e'
from Royale. It was a long, narrowing perspective of arcades, lattices,
balconies, _zaguans_, dormer windows, and blue sky--of low, tiled roofs,
red and wrinkled, huddled down into their own shadows; of canvas awnings
with fluttering borders, and of grimy lamp-posts twenty feet in height,
each reaching out a gaunt iron arm over