rom humanity."

"Yes, my Lord Marquis."

"All the pleasures of life disport themselves round my bed of death,
and dance about me like fair women; but if I beckon to them, I must die.
Death always confronts me. You must be the barrier between the world and
me."

"Yes, my Lord Marquis," said the old servant, wiping the drops of
perspiration from his wrinkled forehead. "But if you don't wish to
see pretty women, how will you manage at the Italiens this evening? An
English family is returning to London, and I have taken their box for
the rest of the season, and it is in a splendid position--superb; in the
first row."

Raphael, deep in his own deep musings, paid no attention to him.

"Do you see that splendid equipage, a brougham painted a dark brown
color, but with the arms of an ancient and noble family shining from
the panels? As it rolls past, all the shop-girls admire it, and look
longingly at the yellow satin lining, the rugs from la Savonnerie,
the daintiness and freshness of every detail, the silken cushions and
tightly-fitting glass windows. Two liveried footmen are mounted behind
this aristocratic carriage; and within, a head lies back among
the silken cushions, the feverish face and hollow eyes of Raphael,
melancholy and sad. Emblem of the doom of wealth! He flies across Paris
like a rocket, and reaches the peristyle of the Theatre Favart. The
passers-by make way for him; the two footmen help him to alight, an
envious crowd looking on the while."

"What has that fellow done to be so rich?" asks a poor law-student, who
cannot listen to the magical music of Rossini for lack of a five-franc
piece.

Raphael walked slowly along the gangway; he expected no enjoyment from
these pleasures he had once coveted so eagerly. In the interval before
the second act of Semiramide he walked up and down in the lobby, and
along the corridors, leaving his box, which he had not yet entered, to
look after itself. The instinct of property was dead within him already.
Like all invalids, he thought of nothing but his own sufferings. He was
leaning against the chimney-piece in the greenroom. A group had gathered
about it of dandies, young and old, of ministers, of peers without
peerages, and peerages without peers, for so the Revolution of July had
ordered matters. Among a host of adventurers and journalists, in fact,
Raphael beheld a strange, unearthly figure a few paces away among
the crowd. He went towards this grotesque object