tion.
With a heart by nature kindly, he sits now an image cut in steel. He
gazes calmly at his desolate hearth, at his joyless age, and smokes. Man
has no power to move him; fate condemned him to be a statue.

Ah! the strongest, after all, are but weak, erring, human beings. The
last of a race stands weary and old, trembling on the brink of eternity.
Who will close the fading eye? Who will smooth the dying pillow? With
all his great wealth, with all his wondrous knowledge, what one deed of
charity will that infirm old man take into the presence of his Creator?
He looks dreamingly out at the window. The plate-glass and damask are
not there now; the sunshine is warm and the air balmy. A mild, breezy
March morning, and he is standing on a corner, looking far down the
street. "She is coming, coming;" the dark eyes beam on him, and the
radiant face flushes the pallor of his cheek;--"come." He gives one
lingering, beseeching look at the passing figure, the cigarette drops
to the carpet, the withered hands clasp convulsively the arms of the
chair, the gray head slowly falls on his breast, and one more frail
human being, exhausted with the anxieties of a long and bitter life, is
at rest forever. It's a merry Christmas, this Twenty-fifth of December,
eighteen hundred and eighty-seven,--a very merry Christmas. Times have
scarcely changed at all in the last thirty years.

How he ever got there, or when, I do not now, nor will I ever, know, but
when I looked up Marcel was standing before me.

"M. Granger," said he, abruptly, "it will be necessary for you to seek
another lodging."

"Why?"

"I would do you a service. The proof lies in the future. This house is
doomed."

"Poor Marcel," said I, with genuine pity, "some recent trouble has
turned your brain!"

"Mad!" he replied, laughing bitterly. "The wonder is that I am not. For
years I have been hunted,--hunted like a dog. Prisons have been my
dwelling-place, disguises my only clothing. My pillow is a spy; the very
atmosphere I breathe is analyzed."

"And what is your offense?"

"A desire to live as the great God intended an Italian should. A desire
to lift to his place among the free-born the corrupt descendant of
Coriolanus, now nourishing his miserable body on the _scudi_ extorted
from a stranger's patience. The vile crew whom our ancestors drove
howling and naked across the Danube, in undisturbed apathy gloat over
our dearest treasures. Our people are ground into the d