Ah! the strongest, after all, are but weak, erring, human beings.  The last of a race stands weary and old, trembling on the brink of eternity.  Who will close the fading eye?  Who will smooth the dying pillow?  With all his great wealth, with all his wondrous knowledge, what one deed of charity will that infirm old man take into the presence of his Creator?  He looks dreamingly out at the window.  The plate-glass and damask are not there now; the sunshine is warm and the air balmy.  A mild, breezy March morning, and he is standing on a corner, looking far down the street.  “She is coming, coming;” the dark eyes beam on him, and the radiant face flushes the pallor of his cheek;—­“come.”  He gives one lingering, beseeching look at the passing figure, the cigarette drops to the carpet, the withered hands clasp convulsively the arms of the chair, the gray head slowly falls on his breast, and one more frail human being, exhausted with the anxieties of a long and bitter life, is at rest forever.  It’s a merry Christmas, this Twenty-fifth of December, eighteen hundred and eighty-seven,—­a very merry Christmas.  Times have scarcely changed at all in the last thirty years.

How he ever got there, or when, I do not now, nor will I ever, know, but when I looked up Marcel was standing before me.

“M.  Granger,” said he, abruptly, “it will be necessary for you to seek another lodging.”

“Why?”

“I would do you a service.  The proof lies in the future.  This house is doomed.”

“Poor Marcel,” said I, with genuine pity, “some recent trouble has turned your brain!”

“Mad!” he replied, laughing bitterly.  “The wonder is that I am not.  For years I have been hunted,—­hunted like a dog.  Prisons have been my dwelling-place, disguises my only clothing.  My pillow is a spy; the very atmosphere I breathe is analyzed.”

“And what is your offense?”

“A desire to live as the great God intended an Italian should.  A desire to lift to his place among the free-born the corrupt descendant of Coriolanus, now nourishing his miserable body on the scudi extorted from a stranger’s patience.  The vile crew whom our ancestors drove howling and naked across the Danube, in undisturbed apathy gloat over our dearest treasures.  Our people are ground into the dust; our women, stripped in the market-place, shriek under the pitiless lash of the oppressor.  One man, sworn to protect Italy with his life, can save her, and has refused.  That man dies.”

“And you are pledged to kill him?”

“I am pledged to see you safely without these walls by this day fortnight.”

“And you?”

“I remain.”

“Marcel, you are crazy.”

“M.  Granger, you are polite.”

That night fortnight I was away; and this was the message that sent me: 

     “TO M. ARTHUR GRANGER: