not appreciate his attitude of grandeur; but to us, in
the distance, it seemed great and noble."

He looked out over the Mediterranean, where the great adventurers who
cherished these lofty pagan ideals once beat along in the morning of the
world.

"On an afternoon of summer," he continued like one who begins a saga,
"this man, alone and fearless, followed a violator of the law and
arrested him in a house of the village. As he led the man away he
noticed that an Italian followed. He was a little degenerate, wearing a
green hat, and bearing now one name and now another. They traversed the
village toward the municipal prison; and this creature, featured like a
Parisian Apache, skulked behind.

"As they went along, two Austrians seated on the porch of a house heard
the little man speak to the prisoner. He used the word sparate. They did
not know what he meant, for he spoke in Italian; but they recognized
the word, for it was the word used in the mines before the coal was shot
down. The prisoner made his reply in Italian, which the Austrians did
not understand.

"It seemed that this man who had made the arrest did not know Italian,
for he stopped and asked the one behind him whether the prisoner was his
brother. The man replied in the negative."

The Count paused, as though for an explanation. "What the Apache said
was: 'Shall I shoot him here or wait until we reach the ravine?' And the
prisoner replied: 'Wait until we come to the ravine.'

"They went on. Presently they reached a sort of hollow, where the reeds
grew along the road densely and to the height of a man's head. Here the
Italian Apache, the degenerate with the green hat, following some three
steps behind, suddenly drew a revolver from his pocket and shot the man
twice in the back. It was a weapon carrying a lead bullet as large as
the tip of one's little finger. The officer fell. The Apache and the
prisoner fled.

"The wounded man got up. He spread out his arms; and he shouted, with a
great voice, like the heroes of the Iliad. The two wounds were mortal;
they were hideous, ghastly wounds, ripping up the vital organs in the
man's body and severing the great arteries. The splendid pagan knew he
had received his death wounds; and, true to his atavistic ideal, the
ideal of the Greek, the Hebrew and the Roman, the ideal of the great
pagan world to which he in spirit belonged, and of which the poets sing,
he put his own weapon to his head and blew his brains ou