ide, and his hard-hearted resolution not to
remember the Counsellor who had befriended him formerly or whether the
labor of many years had caused it, from that evening, from that moment,
the memory of the Emperor's great Minister began to decay. The ambitious
designs of the shepherd boy of twenty years ago came back to him; but of
all that had befallen him since, John Durer remembered nothing. The hour
of requital was begun!

VI.

Thanks to his good courser, Baron Durer, the Minister, got home in safety
to his chateau. The first person that he met was the baroness. He
turned abruptly away from her.

"Whither are you hurrying so fast, my dear baron?" said she, seeing her
husband running away from her, which was not his custom, for he was fond
of his wife.

"Baron!" was his reply; "to what baron were you calling? I am no baron,
madame--though one day, perhaps, I may be. Let us hope I may."

The tone in which he spoke these words terrified the baroness. Her
husband immediately afterward left the chateau, and began running as fast
as his legs could carry him, neither stopping nor slackening his pace.
His head was bent down, like the head of a miser who is seeking about
everywhere for the treasure which some one has stolen from him. From
that day forward his face assumed a gloomy expression, his color became
sallow, his eye haggard; and he began bitterly to complain that heaven
had thought fit to send him on earth in a shepherd's form and a
shepherd's dress.

Some days later, a messenger from the Emperor's court arrived at the
chateau: "May it please my lord Minister," he began--

"I am no Minister," replied Durer, impatiently; "but have patience, sir,
have patience; I may be Minister one day." Then he began to walk up and
down hastily in the gallery of the chateau, perpetually saying, "I might
have been a Minister by this time, sir, if your great ones did not leave
men of strong intellect, and ability, and purpose, in the jaws of a
misery which eats away the very brain as rust eats away the steel.
Why--why, I ask, debar these men from high offices--these men who have
nothing--merely out of a prejudice, which is as fatal to the individual
as it is deadly to the state?" Then turning sharply on the Emperor's
emissary, "Go, and tell your master, sir," said he, "that yesterday I
was--I was--I was"--pressing his hand, as he spoke, above his forehead,
as though he was trying to find a coronet which had belonged