nating power of the future,--but I doubt it! Its politics
are too corrupt,--its people live too fast, and burn their candle at
both ends, which is unnatural and most unwholesome; moreover, it is
almost destitute of Art in its highest forms,--and is not its confessed
watchward 'the almighty Dollar?' And such a country as that expects to
arrogate to itself the absolute sway of the world? I tell you, _no_--ten
thousand times _no_! It is destitute of nearly everything that has made
nations great and all-powerful in historic annals,--and my belief is
that what, has been, will be again,--and that what has never been, will
never be."

"You mean by that, I suppose, that there is no possibility of doing
anything new,--no way of branching out in some, better and untried
direction?" asked Errington.

Olaf Gueldmar shook his head emphatically. "You can't do it," he said
decisively. "Everything in every way has been begun and completed and
then forgotten over and over in this world,--to be begun and completed
and forgotten again, and so on to the end of the chapter. No one nation
is better than another in this respect,--there is,--there can be nothing
new. Norway, for example, has had its day; whether it will ever have
another I know not,--at any rate, I shall not live to see it. And yet,
what a past!--" He broke off and his eyes grew meditative.

Lorimer looked at him. "You would have been a Viking, Mr. Gueldmar, had
you lived in the old days," he said with a smile.

"I should, indeed!" returned the old man, with an unconsciously haughty
gesture of his head; "and no better fate could have befallen me! To sail
the seas in hot pursuit of one's enemies, or in search of further
conquest,--to feel the very wind and sun beating up the blood in one's
veins,--to live the life of a _man_--a true man! . . . in all the pride
and worth of strength, and invincible vigor!--how much better than the
puling, feeble, sickly existence, led by the majority of men to-day! I
dwell apart from them as much as I can,--I steep my mind and body in the
joys of Nature, and the free fresh air,--but often I feel that the old
days of the heroes must have been best,--when Gorm the Bold and the
fierce Siegfried seized Paris, and stabled their horses in the chapel
where Charlemagne lay buried!"

Pierre Duprez looked up with a faint smile. "Ah, _pardon_! But that was
surely a very long time ago!"

"True!" said Gueldmar quietly. "And no doubt you will not believ