do it!" I cried at last, making a sudden dive towards the table.
But the ironical corner of the rug had reached the ground. I stepped on
it, tripped, and instinctively caught the table to steady myself. The
table, a rickety gueridon, overbalanced, and away rolled my uncorked
phial of prussic acid and fell into a hundred pieces on the tessellated
floor.

"_Solvitur_," said I, grimly, "_ambulando_."

Looking back now, I am inclined to treat myself tenderly. Whether I
should have drunk the poison, if the accident had not occurred, I
cannot say. At the moment of my rush I intended to do so. After the
catastrophe, which I attributed to the curse of ineffectuality that
pursued me, I must confess that I was glad. Not that life looked more
attractive than before, but that the decision had been taken out of my
hands. I could not go about the shops of Verona buying prussic acid
or revolvers or metres of stout rope. And my razors (without Stenson's
care) were benignantly blunt, and I would not condescend to braces.
I groaned and pished and pshawed, but as it was written that I was to
live, I resigned myself to a barren and theoryless existence.

After a day or two the vital instinct asserted itself more strongly. I
became inspired by an illuminating revelation. I had a preliminary aim
in life. I would go out into the world in search of a theory. When found
I would apply it to the regulation of the score and a half years during
which I might possibly expect to remain on this planet. I must take my
chances of it leading me to the corpse of another Polyphemus.

As it struck me I should not find my theory in Italy, I packed up my
belongings and hastened from Verona. At Naples I picked up a Messageries
Maritimes steamer and began a circular tour in the Levant. At
Alexandretta I went ashore, and inquired my way to the dwelling of the
Prefect of Police. I did not call on Hamdi Effendi. But I wandered round
the walls and wondered in a moody, heart-achey way where it was that
Carlotta sat when Harry came along and whistled her like a tame falcon
to his arm. It was a white palace of a house with a closed balcony
supported on rude corbels and tightly shuttered. At the back spread
a large garden surrounded by the famous wall. There was no doubt that
Hamdi was a wealthy personage, and that Carlotta's nurture had been as
gentle as that of any lady in Syria. But the place wherein Carlotta's
childhood had been sheltered had an air of impenetr