but let the meteor-like brilliancy of a woman’s smile—­a woman’s touch—­a woman’s lie—­intermingle itself with the strain, and lo! the false note is struck, discord declares itself, and God Himself, the great Composer, can do nothing in this life to restore the old calm tune of peaceful, unspoiled days!  So I have found; so all of you must find, long before you and sorrow grow old together.

“A white-haired fisherman!”

The words of the king repeated themselves over and over again in my tortured brain.  Yes—­I was greatly changed, I looked worn and old—­ no one would recognize me for my former self.  All at once, with this thought, an idea occurred to me—­a plan of vengeance, so bold, so new, and withal so terrible, that I started from my seat as though stung by an adder.  I paced up and down restlessly, with this lurid light of fearful revenge pouring in on every nook and cranny of my darkened mind.  From whence had come this daring scheme?  What devil, or rather what angel of retribution, had whispered it to my soul?  Dimly I wondered—­but amid all my wonder I began practically to arrange the details of my plot.  I calculated every small circumstance that was likely to occur in the process of carrying it out.  My stupefied senses became aroused from the lethargy of despair, and stood up like soldiers on the alert armed to the teeth.  Past love, pity, pardon, patience—­pooh! what were all these resources of the world’s weakness to me?  What was it to me that the bleeding Christ forgave His enemies in death?  He never loved a woman!  Strength and resolution returned to me.  Let common sailors and rag-pickers resort to murder and suicide as fit outlets for their unreasoning brute wrath when wronged; but as for me, why should I blot my family scutcheon with a merely vulgar crime?  Nay, the vengeance of a Romani must be taken with assured calmness and easy deliberation—­no haste, no plebeian fury, no effeminate fuss, no excitement.  I walked up and down slowly, meditating on every point of the bitter drama in which I had resolved to enact the chief part, from the rise to the fall of the black curtain.  The mists cleared from my brain—­I breathed more easily—­my nerves steadied themselves by degrees—­the prospect of what I purposed doing satisfied me and calmed the fever in my blood.  I became perfectly cool and collected.  I indulged in no more futile regrets for the past—­why should I mourn the loss of a love I never possessed?  It was not as if they had waited till my supposed sudden death—­no! within three months of my marriage they had fooled me; for three whole years they had indulged in their criminal amour, while I, blind dreamer, had suspected nothing.  Now I knew the extent of my injury; I was a man bitterly wronged, vilely duped.  Justice, reason, and self-respect demanded that I should punish to the utmost the miserable tricksters who had played me false.  The passionate tenderness I had felt for my wife was gone—­I