it sky, was another figure--unperceived by, yet completing,
the group below. The arms were raised, half threateningly, half
imploringly, and the lithe, vigorous form swayed in unison with the
wild throbbings of a heart in which sated hate did mortal battle with
outraged love. Chona had conquered; but even in the first flush of her
triumph she knew that love and hope and happiness, that everything
which makes life worth holding to, had been lost.

THE ABLEST MAN IN THE WORLD.

BY E. P. MITCHELL.

_The Sun, New York, May, 1879._

It may or may not be remembered that in 1878 General Ignatieff spent
several weeks of July at the Badischer Hof in Baden. The public
journals gave out that he visited the watering-place for the benefit
of his health, said to be much broken by protracted anxiety and
responsibility in the service of the Czar. But everybody knew that
Ignatieff was just then out of favor at St. Petersburg, and that his
absence from the centres of active statecraft at a time when the peace
of Europe fluttered like a shuttlecock in the air, between Salisbury
and Shouvaloff, was nothing more or less than politely disguised
exile.

I am indebted for the following facts to my friend Fisher, of New
York, who arrived at Baden on the day after Ignatieff, and was duly
announced in the official list of strangers as "Herr Doctor Professor
Fischer, mit Frau Gattin und Bed. Nordamerika."

The scarcity of titles among the travelling aristocracy of North
America is a standing grievance with the ingenious person who
compiles the official list. Professional pride and the instincts of
hospitality alike impel him to supply the lack whenever he can.
He distributes Governor, Major-General, and Doctor Professor with
tolerable impartiality, according as the arriving Americans wear a
distinguished, a martial, or a studious air. Fisher owed his title
to his spectacles.

It was still early in the season. The theatre had not yet opened.
The hotels were hardly half full, the concerts in the kiosk at
vhe Conversationshaus were heard by scattering audiences, and the
shop-keepers of the Bazaar had no better business than to spend their
time in bewailing the degeneracy of Baden Baden since an end was put
to the play. Few excursionists disturbed the meditations of the
shrivelled old custodian of the tower on the Mercuriusberg. Fisher
found the place very stupid--as stupid as Saratoga in June or Long
Branch in September. He was impa