His eye wandered.... "'Twas a marvellous sanative
air, crisp and pure; but for him, one draught and outer darkness. I
myself viewed his royal entry from the gallery--pacing urbane to
slaughter; and I uttered a sigh to see him. 'Why, sir, do you sigh to
see the king?' cried one softly that stood by. 'I sigh, my lord,' I
answered to the instant, 'at sight of a monarch even Duncan's match!'"

He looked his wildest astonishment at me.

"Not, I'd have you remember--not that 'twas blood I did foresee.... To
kill in blood a man, and he a king, so near to natural death ...
foul, foul!"

"And Macbeth?" I said presently--"Macbeth...?"

He laid down his viol with prolonged care.

"His was a soul, sir, nobler than his fate. I followed him not without
love from boyhood--a youth almost too fine of spirit; shrinking
from all violence, over-nicely; eloquent, yet chary of speech,
and of a dark profundity of thought. The questions he would
patter!--unanswerable, searching earth and heaven through.... And who
now was it told me the traitor Judas's hair was red?--yet not red his,
but of a reddish chestnut, fine and bushy. Children have played their
harmless hands at hide-and-seek therein. O sea of many winds!

"For come gloom on the hills, floods, discolouring mist; breathe but
some grandam's tale of darkness and blood and doubleness in his
hearing: all changed. Flame kindled; a fevered unrest drove him out;
and Ambition, that spotted hound of hell, strained at the leash
towards the Pit.

"So runs the world--the ardent and the lofty. We are beyond earth's
story as 'tis told, sir. All's shallower than the heart of man....
Indeed, 'twas one more shattered altar to Hymen."

"'Hymen!'" I said.

He brooded long and silently, clipping his small beard. And while he
was so brooding, a mouse, a moth, dust--I know not what, stirred the
listening strings of his viol to sound, and woke him with a start.

"I vowed, sir, then, to dismiss all memory of such unhappy deeds from
mind--never to speak again that broken lady's name. Oh! I have seen
sad ends--pride abased, splendour dismantled, courage to terror come,
guilt to a crying guilelessness."

"'Guilelessness?'" I said. "Lady Macbeth at least was past all
changing."

The doctor stood up and cast a deep scrutiny on me, which yet,
perhaps, was partly on himself.

"Perceive, sir," he said, "this table--broader, longer, splendidly
burdened; and all adown both sides the board, thanes and th