aintive and
unvarying refrain of idiocy. The boy was thus situated when I first
saw him.

"I begged Stepan Borovitch of my good friend Dr. Duchat. If that
excellent man had not long since died he should have shared in my
triumph. I took Stepan to my home and plied the saw and the knife.
could operate on that poor, worthless, useless, hopeless travesty
of humanity as fearlessly and as recklessly as upon a dog bought or
caught for vivisection. That was a little more than twenty years ago.
To-day Stepan Borovitch wields more power than any other man on the
face of the earth. In ten years he will be the autocrat of Europe,
the master of the world. He never errs; for the machine that reasons
beneath his silver skull never makes a mistake."

Fisher pointed downward at the old custodian of the tower, who was
seen toiling up the hill.

"Dreamers," continued Dr. Rapperschwyll, "have speculated on the
possibility of finding among the ruins of the older civilizations some
brief inscription which shall change the foundations of human
knowledge. Wiser men deride the dream, and laugh at the idea of
scientific kabbala. The wiser men are fools. Suppose that Aristotle
had discovered on a cuneiform-covered tablet at Nineveh the few words,
'Survival of the Fittest.' Philosophy would have gained twenty-two
hundred years. I will give you, in almost as few words, a truth
equally pregnant. _The ultimate evolution of the creature is into the
creator._ Perhaps it will be twenty-two hundred years before the truth
finds general acceptance, yet it is not the less a truth. The Baron
Savitch is my creature, and I am his creator--creator of the ablest
man in Europe, the ablest man in the world.

"Here is our ladder, Monsieur. I have fulfilled my part of the
agreement. Remember yours."

III.

After a two months' tour of Switzerland and the Italian lakes, the
Fishers found themselves at the Hotel Splendide in Paris, surrounded
by people from the States. It was a relief to Fisher, after his
somewhat bewildering experience at Baden, followed by a surfeit of
stupendous and ghostly snow peaks, to be once more among those who
discriminated between a straight flush and a crooked straight, and
whose bosoms thrilled responsive to his own at the sight of the
star-spangled banner. It was particularly agreeable for him to find at
the Hotel Splendide, in a party of Easterners who had come over to see
the Exposition, Miss Bella W