am just tormented with
them. To relieve me of a few is to do me a real service. My brain is
like a railway junction, where the engines are getting up steam on all
the lines at once. The young man saw that. He has not many ideas. So he
purloins mine, and brings them before the public, quite certain that I
shall not protest But he does not take me in. Don't I know when he
is going to filch! He preserves his little indifferent air, with no
expression in his eyes, until suddenly there comes a little nervous
twitch at the corner of his mouth. Done! Nabbed! I have no doubt he
thinks to himself, "Good Lord, what a simpleton Vedrine is!" He has not
the least notion that I watch him and enjoy his little game. Now,' said
the sculptor as he got up, 'I will show you my Knight, and then we will
go over the ruin. It is worth looking at, you will find.'

Passing from the terrace into the building, they mounted a semicircle
of steps and went through a square room, formerly the apartment of the
Secretary to the Conseil d'Etat. It had no floor and no ceiling, all
the upper storeys had fallen through and showed the blue sky between
the huge iron girders, now twisted by the fire, which had divided the
floors. In a corner, against a wall to which were attached long iron
pipes overgrown with creepers, lay in three pieces a model of the Rosen
tomb, buried in nettles and rubbish.

'You see,' said Vedrine, 'or rather you can't see.' And he began to
describe the monument. The little Princess's conception of a tomb was
not easy to come up to. Several things had been tried--reminiscences of
Egyptian, Assyrian, and Ninevite monuments--before deciding on Vedrine's
plan, which would raise an outcry among architects, but was certainly
impressive. A soldier's tomb: an open tent with the canvas looped back,
disclosing within, before an altar, the wide low sarcophagus, modelled
on a camp bedstead, on which lay the good Knight Crusader, fallen for
King and Creed; beside him his broken sword, and at his feet a great
greyhound.

The difficulty of the work and the hardness of the Dalmatian granite,
which the Princess insisted on having, had obliged Vedrine to take
mallet and chisel himself and to work like an artisan under the
tarpaulin at the cemetery. Now, at last, after much time and trouble,
the canopy was up, 'and that young rascal, Astier, will get some credit
from it,' added the sculptor with a smile in which was no touch of
bitterness. Then he li