Back swam my senses:  a sickening pain
        Tingled like lightning through my brain,
        And ere the spasm of fear was broke,
        The men who had borne him homeward spoke
        Soothingly:  “Some assassin’s knife
        Had taken the innocent artist’s life—­
        Wherefore, ’twere hard to say:  all men
        Were prone to have troubles now and then
        The world knew naught of.  Toward his friend
        Florence stood waiting to extend
        Tenderest dole.”  Then came my tears,
        And I’ve been sorry these twenty years.

        Now, Fra Bernardo, you have my sin: 
        Do you think Saint Peter will let me in?

MARGARET J. PRESTON.

MONSIEUR FOURNIER’S EXPERIMENT.

“La transfusion parait avoir eu quelque succes dans ces derniers temps.”

A dejected man, M. le docteur Maurice Fournier locked the door of his physiological laboratory in the Place de l’Ecole de Medecine, and walked away toward his rooms in the rue Rossini.  At two-and-thirty, rich, brilliant, an ambitious graduate of l’Ecole de Medecine, an enthusiastic pupil of Claude Bernard’s, a devoted lover of science, and above all of physiology, yesterday he was without a care save to make his name great among the great names of science—­to win for himself a place in the foremost rank of the followers of that mistress whom only he loved and worshiped.  To-day a word had swept away all his fondest hopes.  Trousseau, the keenest observer in all Paris, formerly his father’s friend, now no less his own, had kindly but firmly called his attention to himself, and to the malady that had so imperceptibly and insidiously fastened itself upon him that until the moment he never dreamed of its approach.  He had been too full of his work to think of himself.  In any other case he would scarcely have dared to dispute the opinion of the highest medical authority in Europe; nevertheless in his own he began to argue the matter:  “But, my dear doctor, I am well.”

“No, my friend, you are not.  You are thin and pale, and I noticed the other night, when you came late to the meeting of the Institute, that your breathing was quick and labored, and that the reading of your excellent paper was frequently interrupted by a short cough.”

“That was nothing.  I was hurried and excited, and I have been keeping myself too closely to my work.  A run to Dunkerque, a week of rest and sea-air, will make all right again.”

But the great man shook his head gravely:  “Not weeks, but years, of a different life are needed.  You must give up the laboratory altogether if you want to live.  Remember your mother’s fate and your father’s early death—­think of the deadly blight that fell so soon upon the rare beauty of your sister.  Some day you will realize your danger:  realize it now, in time.  Close your laboratory, lock up your library, say adieu to Paris, and lead the life of a traveler, an Arab, a Tartar.  For the present cease to dream of the future:  strength is better than a professorship in the College of France, and health more than the cross of the Legion of Honor.”