kill you!--Silence! I am Nero! I am
Nebuchadnezzar!"

"But, Raphael, we are in queer company, and you ought to keep quiet for
the sake of your own dignity."

"My life has been silent too long. I mean to have my revenge now on the
world at large. I will not amuse myself by squandering paltry five-franc
pieces; I will reproduce and sum up my epoch by absorbing human
lives, human minds, and human souls. There are the treasures of
pestilence--that is no paltry kind of wealth, is it? I will wrestle with
fevers--yellow, blue, or green--with whole armies, with gibbets. I can
possess Foedora--Yet no, I do not want Foedora; she is a disease; I am
dying of Foedora. I want to forget Foedora."

"If you keep on calling out like this, I shall take you into the
dining-room."

"Do you see this skin? It is Solomon's will. Solomon belongs to me--a
little varlet of a king! Arabia is mine, Arabia Petraea to boot; and the
universe, and you too, if I choose. If I choose--Ah! be careful. I can
buy up all our journalist's shop; you shall be my valet. You shall be
my valet, you shall manage my newspaper. Valet! _valet_, that is to say,
free from aches and pains, because he has no brains."

At the word, Emile carried Raphael off into the dining-room.

"All right," he remarked; "yes, my friend, I am your valet. But you
are about to be editor-in-chief of a newspaper; so be quiet, and behave
properly, for my sake. Have you no regard for me?"

"Regard for you! You shall have Havana cigars, with this bit of
shagreen: always with this skin, this supreme bit of shagreen. It is
a cure for corns, and efficacious remedy. Do you suffer? I will remove
them."

"Never have I known you so senseless----"

"Senseless, my friend? Not at all. This skin contracts whenever I form a
wish--'tis a paradox. There is a Brahmin underneath it! The Brahmin must
be a droll fellow, for our desires, look you, are bound to expand----"

"Yes, yes----"

"I tell you----"

"Yes, yes, very true, I am quite of your opinion--our desires
expand----"

"The skin, I tell you."

"Yes."

"You don't believe me. I know you, my friend; you are as full of lies as
a new-made king."

"How can you expect me to follow your drunken maunderings?"

"I will bet you I can prove it. Let us measure it----"

"Goodness! he will never get off to sleep," exclaimed Emile, as he
watched Raphael rummaging busily in the dining-room.

Thanks to the peculiar clearness with which external o