just left. The listeners, fearing that
Leon's romance might be in several volumes, took their places around
him, some on boxes, some on chairs.

CHAPTER III.

THE CRIME OF THE LEARNED PROFESSOR MEISER.

"Ladies," said Leon, "Professor Meiser was no vulgar malefactor, but a
man devoted to science and humanity. If he killed the French colonel who
at this moment reposes beneath my coat tails, it was for the sake of
saving his life, as well as of throwing light on a question of the
deepest interest, even to each one of you.

"The duration of our existence is very much too brief. That is a fact
which no man can contradict. We know that in a hundred years, not one of
the nine or ten persons assembled in this house will be living on the
face of the earth. Is not this a deplorable fact?"

Mlle. Sambucco heaved a heavy sigh, and Leon continued:

"Alas! Mademoiselle, like you I have sighed many a time at the
contemplation of this dire necessity. You have a niece, the most
beautiful and the most adorable of all nieces, and the sight of her
charming face gladdens your heart. But you yearn for something more; you
will not be satisfied until you have seen your little grand nephews
trotting around. You will see them I earnestly believe. But will you
see their children? It is doubtful. Their grandchildren? Impossible! In
regard to the tenth, twentieth, thirtieth generation, it is useless even
to dream.

"One _will_ dream of it, nevertheless, and perhaps there is no man who
has not said to himself at least once in his life: 'If I could but come
to life again in a couple of centuries!' One would wish to return to
earth to seek news of his family; another, of his dynasty. A philosopher
is anxious to know if the ideas that he has planted will have borne
fruit; a politician, if his party will have obtained the upper hand; a
miser, if his heirs will not have dissipated the fortune he has made; a
mere land-holder, if the trees in his garden will have grown tall. No
one is indifferent to the future destinies of this world, which we
gallop through in a few years, never to return to it again. Who has not
envied the lot of Epimenides, who went to sleep in a cave, and, on
reopening his eyes, perceived that the world had grown old? Who has not
dreamed, on his own account, of the marvellous adventure of the sleeping
Beauty in the wood?

"Well, ladies, Professor Meiser, one of the least visionary men of the
age, was persuaded that s