That, no doubt, was what Napoleon prayed for.  Yet, when he rose up his face was wonderfully changed and softened by the religious light which had shone on it for a few moments.  Then, throwing himself into the armchair, he closed his eyes.  And, as the fire burnt low, Rohan Gwenfern silently descended from the loft, and something gleamed in his hand.  He crept up to the sleeping emperor, and stared at his face, reading it line by line.  Napoleon moved uneasily in his sleep, and murmured to himself, and his hand opened and shut.

As Rohan raised his knife to strike home to the heart of the tyrant he saw the hand—­white and small, like a woman’s or a child’s.  Again he looked at the face.  Ah, there was no imperial grandeur here!  Only a feeble, sallow, tired, and sickly creature, whom a strong man could crush down with one blow of his fist.  Rohan grew weak as he looked, and the long knife almost fell from his clutch.

“I must kill him—­I must kill him!” he kept saying to himself.  “His one life against the peace and happiness of earth—­the life of a Cain!  If he awakens, war will awaken, and fire, famine, and slaughter!  Kill him, Rohan, kill him!”

Perhaps if Napoleon had not prayed before he slept, his enemy would have carried out his purpose.  But he had prayed; his face had become beautiful for a moment, and he fell asleep as fearlessly as a child.  No!  Rohan Gwenfern was not made of the stuff of which savage assassins are formed; though there was madness in his brain, there was still love in his heart.  He could not kill even Cain, when God had sanctified the murderer with sleep.  God had made Napoleon, and God had sent him; bloody as he was, he, too, was God’s child.

Opening the great casement window of the room in the farmhouse, Gwenfern gazed for a moment with wild eyes and quivering lips on the pale, worn face of the great conqueror, and then leaped out into the darkness.  When Napoleon awoke, a long knife was lying at his feet; but he heeded it not, and little dreamt that a few minutes ago it had been pointed at his heart.

Ah, Rohan Gwenfern had done well to leave the mighty emperor in the hands of God, and go back, a wild, tattered, mad beggar to his sweetheart Marcelle, in the little Breton village of Kromlaix.  For as Napoleon came out of the farmhouse, and looked at the dawning sky, there rose up, clouding the lurid star of his destiny, the blood-red shadow—­ WATERLOO!

* * * * *

JOHN BUNYAN

The Holy War

      John Bunyan was born at Elstow, near Bedford, England, in
     1628.  After receiving a scanty education at the village
     school, he worked hard at the forge with his father.  In his
     sixteenth year he lost his mother, and soon after he joined
     the army, then engaged in the Civil War; but his military
     experience lasted only