sent for me to take her picture, and I went.  I went and I painted her as Cleopatra—­by her wish.  Ah! it was a face for Cleopatra—­the eyes that burn your youth dead, the lips that kiss your honor blind!  A face—­my God! how beautiful!  She had set herself to gain my soul; and as the picture grew, and grew, and grew, so my life grew into hers till I lived only by her breath.  Why did she want my life? she had so many!  She had rich lives, great lives, grand lives at her bidding; and yet she knew no rest till she had leaned down from her cruel height and had seized mine, that had nothing on earth but the joys of the sun and the dew, and the falling of night, and the dawning of day, that are given to the birds of the fields.”

His chest heaved with the spasms that with each throe seemed to tear his frame asunder; still he conquered them, and his words went on; his eyes fastened on the burning white glare of the wall as though all the beauty of this woman glowed afresh there to his sight.

“She was great; no matter her name—­she lives still.  She was vile; aye, but not in my sight till too late.  Why is it that the heart which is pure never makes ours beat upon it with the rapture sin gives?  Through month on month my picture grew, and my passion grew with it, fanned by her hand.  She knew that never would a man paint her beauty like one who gave his soul for the price of success.  I had my paradise; I was drunk; and I painted as never the colors of mortals painted a woman.  I think even she was content; even she, who in her superb arrogance thought she was matchless and deathless.  Then came my reward; when the picture was done, her fancy had changed!  A light scorn, a careless laugh, a touch of her fan on my cheek; could I not understand?  Was I still such a child?  Must I be broken more harshly in to learn to give place?  That was all!  And at last her lackey pushed me back with his wand from her gates!  What would you?  I had not known what a great lady’s illicit caprices meant; I was still but a boy!  She had killed me; she had struck my genius dead; she had made earth my hell—­what of that?  She had her beauty eternal in the picture she needed, and the whole city rang with her loveliness as they looked on my work.  I have never painted again.  I came here.  What of that?  An artist the less then, the world did not care; a life the less soon, she will not care either!”

Then, as the words ended, a great wave of blood beat back his breath and burst from the pent-up torture of his striving lungs, and stained red the dark and silken masses of his beard.  His comrade had seen the hemorrhage many times; yet now he knew, as he had never known before, that that was death.

As he held him upward in his arms, and shouted loud for help, the great luminous eyes of the French soldier looked up at him through their mist with the deep, fond gratitude that beams in the eyes of a dog as it drops down to die, knowing one touch and one voice to the last.