ther's crowns and estates, slaughter one another's subjects; it has
raised up prize-fighters, and poets, and villages mayors, and little
and big politicians, and big and little charity-founders, and bicycle
champions, and banditti chiefs, and frontier desperadoes, and Napoleons.
Anything to get notoriety; anything to set the village, or the township,
or the city, or the State, or the nation, or the planet shouting,
"Look--there he goes--that is the man!" And in five minutes' time, at no
cost of brain, or labor, or genius this mangy Italian tramp has beaten
them all, transcended them all, outstripped them all, for in time their
names will perish; but by the friendly help of the insane newspapers and
courts and kings and historians, his is safe and live and thunder in the
world all down the ages as long as human speech shall endure! Oh, if it
were not so tragic how ludicrous it would be!

She was so blameless, the Empress; and so beautiful, in mind and heart,
in person and spirit; and whether with a crown upon her head or without
it and nameless, a grace to the human race, and almost a justification
of its creation; WOULD be, indeed, but that the animal that struck her
down re-establishes the doubt.

In her character was every quality that in woman invites and engages
respect, esteem, affection, and homage. Her tastes, her instincts, and
her aspirations were all high and fine and all her life her heart and
brain were busy with activities of a noble sort. She had had bitter
griefs, but they did not sour her spirit, and she had had the highest
honors in the world's gift, but she went her simple way unspoiled. She
knew all ranks, and won them all, and made them her friends. An English
fisherman's wife said, "When a body was in trouble she didn't send
her help, she brought it herself." Crowns have adorned others, but she
adorned her crowns.

It was a swift celebrity the assassin achieved. And it is marked by some
curious contrasts. At noon last, Saturday there was no one in the
world who would have considered acquaintanceship with him a thing
worth claiming or mentioning; no one would have been vain of such an
acquaintanceship; the humblest honest boot-black would not have valued
the fact that he had met him or seen him at some time or other; he was
sunk in abysmal obscurity, he was away beneath the notice of the bottom
grades of officialdom. Three hours later he was the one subject
of conversation in the world, the gilded