MISTER GABRIEL, MAX’S FRIEND:  Caesar wants that thing to put
     on the front of the column.

     BILL.

It took me a few minutes to understand it.  At last I realized that Caesar’s officer—­Bill—­had sent for the inscription for the monument, about which Caesar had spoken to Max.

I called down to the messenger to wait, and that I would give it to him.

I sat down, and, after some thought, wrote, on the back of the wrapping-paper, these words: 

THIS GREAT MONUMENT
IS
ERECTED BY
CAESAR LOMELLINI,
COMMANDING GENERAL OF
THE BROTHERHOOD OF DESTRUCTION,
IN COMMEMORATION OF THE DEATH AND BURIAL OF
MODERN CIVILIZATION.

It is composed of the bodies of a quarter of a million of
human beings, who were once the rulers, or the instruments
of the rulers, of this mighty, but, alas! this ruined city.

They were dominated by leaders who were altogether evil.

They corrupted the courts, the juries, the newspapers, the
legislatures, the congresses, the ballot-boxes and the
hearts and souls of the people.

     They formed gigantic combinations to plunder the poor; to
     make the miserable more miserable; to take from those who
     had least and give it to those who had most.

They used the machinery of free government to effect oppression; they made liberty a mockery, and its traditions a jest; they drove justice from the land and installed cruelty, ignorance, despair and vice in its place.

     Their hearts were harder than the nether mill-stone; they
     degraded humanity and outraged God.

     At length indignation stirred in the vasty courts of
     heaven; and overburdened human nature rose in universal
     revolt on earth.

By the very instruments which their own wickedness had created they perished; and here they lie, sepulchred in stone, and heaped around explosives as destructive as their own lives.  We execrate their vices, while we weep for their misfortunes.  They were the culmination of centuries of misgovernment; and they paid an awful penalty for the sins of generations of short-sighted

     and selfish ancestors, as well as for their own cruelty and
     wickedness.

     Let this monument, O man! stand forever.

Should civilization ever revive on earth, let the human race come hither and look upon this towering shaft, and learn to restrain selfishness and live righteously.  From this ghastly pile let it derive the great lesson, that no earthly government can endure which is not built on mercy, justice, truth and love.

I tied the paper to the cord and lowered it down to the waiting messenger.

At noon Max returned.  His clothes were torn, his face pale, his eyes wild-looking, and around his head he wore a white bandage, stained with his own blood.  Christina screamed and his mother fainted.