s: and all day long he learned the philosophy of life
from those grand constitutional monarchists, the bees.

There are many men, particularly to-day, in our country, who know how to
kill time: Lorand merely struggled with time, and every day as it passed
was a defeat for him.

He never went shooting, he said it was not good for him to take a loaded
gun in his hand.

At night one of my children always slept in his room.

"I am afraid of myself," he confessed to me.

He was afraid of himself and of that quiet house, down there beside the
brook.

"I would love to sleep there under the perfumed herb-roots."

A life wasted!

One beautiful summer afternoon my little son rushed to me with the news
that his uncle Lorand was lying on the floor in the middle of the room,
and would not rise.

With the worst suspicions, I hastened to his side.

When I entered his room, he was lying, not on the floor, but on the bed.

He lay face downward on the bed.

"What is the matter?" I asked, taking his hand.

"Nothing at all:--only I am dying slowly."

"Great heavens! What have you done?"

"Don't be alarmed. It was not my hand."

"Then what is the matter?"

"A bee-sting. Laugh at me--I shall die from it."

In the morning he had said that robber bees had attacked his hives, and
he was going to destroy them. A strange bee had stung him on the temple.

"But not there ... not there ..." he panted, breathing feverishly: "not
into the eighth resting-place--out yonder under the perfumed herb-roots.
There let us lie in the dust one beside the other. Brick up that door.
Good night."

Then he closed his eyes and never opened them again.

Before I could call Fanny to his side he was dead.

The valiant hero who had struggled single-handed against whole troops,
the man of iron whom neither the sword nor the lance could kill, in ten
minutes perished from the prick of a tiny little insect.

God moves among us!

When the last moment of temptation had come, when weariness of life was
about to arm his hand with the curse of his forefathers, He had sent the
very tiniest of his flying minions, and had carried him up on the wings
of a bee to the place where the happy ones dwell.

* * * * *

And we are still growing older: who knows how long it will last?

FINIS

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Debts of Honor, by Maurus Jokai

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