of the mad riot of an orgy?
Death is as unexpected in his caprice as a courtesan in her disdain; but
death is truer--Death has never forsaken any man.

Don Juan closed the door of the banqueting-hall; and as he went down
the long gallery, through the cold and darkness, he strove to assume an
expression in keeping with the part he had to play; he had thrown off
his mirthful mood, as he had thrown down his table napkin, at the first
thought of this role. The night was dark. The mute servitor, his guide
to the chamber where the dying man lay, lighted the way so dimly that
Death, aided by cold, silence, and darkness, and it may be by a reaction
of drunkenness, could send some sober thoughts through the spendthrift's
soul. He examined his life, and became thoughtful, like a man involved
in a lawsuit on his way to the Court.

Bartolommeo Belvidero, Don Juan's father, was an old man of ninety, who
had devoted the greatest part of his life to business pursuits. He had
acquired vast wealth in many a journey to magical Eastern lands, and
knowledge, so it was said, more valuable than the gold and diamonds,
which had almost ceased to have any value for him.

"I would give more to have a tooth in my head than for a ruby," he would
say at times with a smile. The indulgent father loved to hear Don Juan's
story of this and that wild freak of youth. "So long as these follies
amuse you, dear boy----" he would say laughingly, as he lavished money
on his son. Age never took such pleasure in the sight of youth; the fond
father did not remember his own decaying powers while he looked on that
brilliant young life.

Bartolommeo Belvidero, at the age of sixty, had fallen in love with an
angel of peace and beauty. Don Juan had been the sole fruit of this late
and short-lived love. For fifteen years the widower had mourned the
loss of his beloved Juana; and to this sorrow of age, his son and
his numerous household had attributed the strange habits that he had
contracted. He had shut himself up in the least comfortable wing of his
palace, and very seldom left his apartments; even Don Juan himself must
first ask permission before seeing his father. If this hermit, unbound
by vows, came or went in his palace or in the streets of Ferrara, he
walked as if he were in a dream, wholly engrossed, like a man at strife
with a memory, or a wrestler with some thought.

The young Don Juan might give princely banquets, the palace might echo
with clamorous