. The ferment,
however, has now subsided. To-morrow morning Maude Cibras ends her life
on the gallows.'

Thus I ended my narrative.

Without a word Zaleski rose from the couch, and walked to the organ.
Assisted from behind by Ham, who foreknew his master's every whim, he
proceeded to render with infinite feeling an air from the _Lakme_ of
Delibes; long he sat, dreamily uttering the melody, his head sunken on
his breast. When at last he rose, his great expanse of brow was clear,
and a smile all but solemn in its serenity was on his lips. He walked
up to an ivory _escritoire_, scribbled a few words on a sheet of paper,
and handed it to the negro with the order to take my trap and drive
with the message in all haste to the nearest telegraph office.

'That message,' he said, resuming his place on the couch, 'is a last
word on the tragedy, and will, no doubt, produce some modification in
the final stage of its history. And now, Shiel, let us sit together and
confer on this matter. From the manner in which you have expressed
yourself, it is evident that there are points which puzzle you--you do
not get a clean _coup d'oeil_ of the whole regiment of facts, and their
causes, and their consequences, as they occurred. Let us see if out of
that confusion we cannot produce a coherence, a symmetry. A great wrong
is done, and on the society in which it is done is imposed the task of
making it translucent, of seeing it in all its relations, and of
punishing it. But what happens? The society fails to rise to the
occasion; on the whole, it contrives to make the opacity more opaque,
does not see the crime in any human sense; is unable to punish it. Now
this, you will admit, whenever it occurs, is a woful failure: woful I
mean, not very in itself, but very in its significance: and there must
be a precise cause for it. That cause is the lack of something not
merely, or specially, in the investigators of the wrong, but in the
world at large--shall we not boldly call it the lack of culture? Do
not, however, misunderstand me: by the term I mean not so much
attainment in general, as _mood_ in particular. Whether or when such
mood may become universal may be to you a matter of doubt. As for me, I
often think that when the era of civilisation begins--as assuredly it
shall some day begin--when the races of the world cease to be
credulous, ovine mobs and become critical, human nations, then will be
the ushering in of the ten thousand years of a