ips for a first sip, the lecherous old pagan's
own lips sought the spot, sipped, and he sank back into his chair.

"What else went on till he rose again no one knew or minded. No eye in the
house could wander from the haggard, evil, smiling, but sinister, old
face. Presently he was up once more and, with his raised goblet brimming
with champagne, he offered a third toast:

"'Here's to material Nature, the prolific mother of all we know, see, or
hear. Here's to the matter that sparkles in our glasses, and runs through
our veins as a river of youth; here's to the matter that our eyes caress
as they dwell on the bloom of those young cheeks. Here's to the matter
that--here's to--here's--the matter--the matter that--here's--'

"The attack had seized him. Terrible and unforgetable was the picture of
the dissolution. The lips twitched, the eyes rolled white, the raised hand
trembled, the wine sputtered like the broken syllables which the shattered
memory would not send and the swollen tongue suddenly could not utter. For
one moment of writhing agony he held the trembling glass aloft; then his
arm dropped with a swiftness that shattered the crystal. Instinctively he
groped up to the stairs for light and air. He reeled as if every step
would be his last. Rosa helped him up to the window, but recoiled from him
with a shriek. Again his hand flew up, but there was neither glass, wine,
nor words. He rolled helplessly and fell to the floor, dead. The curtain
fell.

"It was probably the most realistically detailed figure of refined moral
and physical depravity, searched to its inevitable end, the stage has ever
seen. For a moment after the curtain fell there was a hush of awe and
surprise. Then the audience found itself and called Mansfield to the
footlights a dozen times. But neither then nor thereafter would he appear
until he had removed the wig and make-up of the dead Baron. There was no
occasion to change his clothes; he wore the conventional evening suit. The
effect of shrivelled undersizedness was purely a muscular effect of the
actor. The contrast between the figure that fell at the head of the stairs
and the athletic young gentleman who acknowledged the applause was no
anti-climax.

"Mansfield had come into his own. The superb art of his performance had
dwarfed all about it; the play was killed, but he was from that moment a
figure to be reckoned with in the history of the theatre."

It is said that when Paderewsky playe