ain in his laughter. Ah, God! what a farce it was! One man dead and
another dying; the beginning and the end of the war. The comic opera!
La Grande Duchesse! And the fool of an Englishman was playing Fritz! He
started down the road, his body slouched forward, the saber trailing in
the dust....

"Voici le sabre de mon pere!"

The hand of madness had touched him. The Mecklenberg followed at his
heels as a dog would have followed his master.

Less than a mile away a yellow haze wavered in the sky. It was the
reflection of the city lights.

Maurice passed under the town gates, the wild song on his lips, his eyes
bloodshot, his hair dank about his brow, conscious of nothing but the
mad, rollicking rhythm. Nobody molested him; those he met gave him the
full width of the road. A strange picture they presented, the man and
the troop horse. Some one recognized the trappings of the horse; half
an hour later it was known throughout the city that the king's army
had been defeated and that Madame was approaching. Students began
their depredations. They built bonfires. They raided the office of the
official paper, and destroyed the presses and type. Later they marched
around the Hohenstaufenplatz, yelling and singing.

Once a gendarme tried to stop Maurice and inquire into his business.
The inquisition was abruptly ended by a cut from the madman's sword.
The gendarme took to his legs. Maurice continued, and the Mecklenberg
tramped on after him. Into the Konigstrasse they turned. At this time,
before the news was known, the street was deserted. Up the center of
it the man went, his saber scraping along the asphalt, the horse always
following.

Voici le sabre de mon pere! Tu vas le mettre a ton cote! Apres la
victoire, j'espere Te revoir en bonne sante.....

The street lamps swayed; sometimes a dozen revolved on one post, and
Maurice would stop long enough to laugh. How easy it was to walk! All
he had to do was to lift a foot, and the pavement would rise to meet it.
The moon, standing high behind him, cast a long, weird shadow, and he
staggered after it and cut at it with the saber. It was only when he saw
the lights of the royal palace and the great globes on the gate posts
that sanity returned. This sanity was of short duration.

"To the palace!" he cried; "to the palace! To warn her!" And he stumbled
against the gates, still calling, "To the palace! To the palace!"

The cuirassiers who had been left behind to protect t