d to foot.

"You do laugh, I tell you."

Then seizing the child with a grasp which would have been one of fury
had it not been one of pity, he asked him: roughly,--

"Who did that to you?"

The child replied,--

"I don't know what you mean."

"How long have you had that laugh?"

"I have always been thus," said the child.

Ursus turned towards the chest, saying in a low voice,--

"I thought that work was out of date."

He took from the top of it, very softly, so as not to awaken the infant,
the book which he had placed there for a pillow.

"Let us see Conquest," he murmured.

It was a bundle of paper in folio, bound in soft parchment. He turned
the pages with his thumb, stopped at a certain one, opened the book wide
on the stove, and read,--

"'_De Denasatis_,' it is here."

And he continued,--

"_Bucca fissa usque ad aures, genezivis denudatis, nasoque murdridato,
masca eris, et ridebis semper_."

"There it is for certain."

Then he replaced the book on one of the shelves, growling.

"It might not be wholesome to inquire too deeply into a case of the
kind. We will remain on the surface. Laugh away, my boy!"

Just then the little girl awoke. Her good-day was a cry.

"Come, nurse, give her the breast," said Ursus.

The infant sat up. Ursus taking the phial from the stove gave it to her
to suck.

Then the sun arose. He was level with the horizon. His red rays gleamed
through the glass, and struck against the face of the infant, which was
turned towards him. Her eyeballs, fixed on the sun, reflected his purple
orbit like two mirrors. The eyeballs were immovable, the eyelids also.

"See!" said Ursus. "She is blind."

PART II.

BOOK THE FIRST.

_THE EVERLASTING PRESENCE OF THE
PAST: MAN REFLECTS MAN_.

CHAPTER I.

LORD CLANCHARLIE.

I.

There was, in those days, an old tradition.

That tradition was Lord Linnaeus Clancharlie.

Linnaeus Baron Clancharlie, a contemporary of Cromwell, was one of the
peers of England--few in number, be it said--who accepted the republic.
The reason of his acceptance of it might, indeed, for want of a better,
be found in the fact that for the time being the republic was
triumphant. It was a matter of course that Lord Clancharlie should
adhere to the republic, as long as the republic had the upper hand; but
after the close of the revolution and the fall of the parliamentary
government, Lord Clancharlie had persisted in his fidelity to