they were
erecting the gallows in front of the very palace door. As he entered
the princess's apartment, the invalid's pains were redoubled and she
began to cry out that they should put an end to that impostor.

"I have not exhausted all my resources yet," said Briones gravely,
"deign, your Royal Highness, to wait a little while." He then went out
of the room and gave orders in the princess's name that all the bells
of the city should be rung.

When he returned to the royal apartment, the demon, who has a mortal
hatred of the sound of bells, and is, moreover, inquisitive, asked
Briones what the bells were ringing for.

"They are ringing," responded the soldier, "because of the arrival of
your mother-in-law, whom I have ordered to be summoned."

Scarcely had the demon heard that his mother-in-law had arrived, than
he flew away with such rapidity that not even a sun's ray could have
caught him. Proud as a peacock, Briones was left in victorious
possession of the field.

THE GENEROUS GAMBLER[17]

BY CHARLES PIERRE BAUDELAIRE

[17] From _The English Review_, November 1918. By permission
of the Editor and Mr. Arthur Symons.

Yesterday, across the crowd of the boulevard, I found myself touched
by a mysterious Being I had always desired to know, and who I
recognized immediately, in spite of the fact that I had never seen
him. He had, I imagined, in himself, relatively as to me, a similar
desire, for he gave me, in passing, so significant a sign in his eyes
that I hastened to obey him. I followed him attentively, and soon I
descended behind him into a subterranean dwelling, astonishing to me
as a vision, where shone a luxury of which none of the actual houses
in Paris could give me an approximate example. It seemed to me
singular that I had passed so often that prodigious retreat without
having discovered the entrance. There reigned an exquisite, an almost
stifling atmosphere, which made one forget almost instantaneously all
the fastidious horrors of life; there I breathed a sombre sensuality,
like that of opium-smokers when, set on the shore of an enchanted
island, over which shone an eternal afternoon, they felt born in them,
to the soothing sounds of melodious cascades, the desire of never
again seeing their households, their women, their children, and of
never again being tossed on the decks of ships by storms.

There were there strange faces of men and women, gifted with so fatal
a beauty that