as pale, his
lips were livid, his blue eyes were dim, and in his left temple there
was a round black hole made by the bullet from his--Napoleonder's--pistol.
And the ghastly figure seemed to ask again, "Why did you kill me?"

Napoleonder turns over and over, from side to side, in his bed. He sees
that it's a bad business. He can't get rid of that soldier. And, more
than all, he wonders at himself. "What an extraordinary occurrence!" he
thinks. "I've killed millions of people, of all countries and nations,
without the least misgiving; and now, suddenly, one miserable soldier
comes and throws all my ideas into a tangle!"

Finally Napoleonder got up; but the confinement of his golden tent
seemed oppressive. He went out into the open air, mounted his horse, and
rode away to the place where he had shot to death the vexatious soldier.

"I've heard," he said to himself, "that when a dead man appears in a
vision, it is necessary to sprinkle earth on the eyes of the corpse;
then he'll lie quiet."

Napoleonder rides on. The moon is shining brightly, and the bodies of
the dead are lying on the battle-field in heaps. Everywhere he sees
corruption and smells corruption.

"And all these," he thought, "I have killed."

And, wonderful to say, it seems to him as if all the dead men have the
same face,--a young face with blue eyes, and blond hair, and the faint
shadow of a mustache,--and they all seem to be looking at him with
kindly, pitying eyes, and their bloodless lips move just a little as
they ask, without anger or reproach, "Why? Why?"

Napoleonder felt a dull, heavy pressure at his heart. He had not spirit
enough left to go to the little mound where the body of the dead soldier
lay, so he turned his horse and rode back to his tent; and every corpse
that he passed seemed to say, "Why? Why?"

He no longer felt the desire to ride at a gallop over the dead bodies of
the Russian soldiers. On the contrary, he picked his way among them
carefully, riding respectfully around the remains of every man who had
died with honor on that field of blood; and now and then he even crossed
himself and said: "Akh, that one ought to have lived! What a fine fellow
that one was! He must have fought with splendid courage. And I killed
him--why?"

The great conqueror never noticed that his heart was growing softer and
warmer, but so it was. He pitied his dead enemies at last, and then the
evil spirit went away from him, and left him in all respe