rchment-like skin betrayed the lines and
hollows of his skeleton. The front of his skull-like face was twisted
with the sardonic laugh of destruction. His cane-like arms were whirling
aloft a gigantic sickle. From his angular shoulders was hanging a
ragged, filthy shroud.

And the furious cavalcade was passing like a hurricane over the immense
assemblage of human beings. The heavens showed above their heads, a
livid, dark-edged cloud from the west. Horrible monsters and deformities
were swarming in spirals above the furious horde, like a repulsive
escort. Poor Humanity, crazed with fear, was fleeing in all directions
on hearing the thundering pace of the Plague, War, Hunger and Death. Men
and women, young and old, were knocking each other down and falling to
the ground overwhelmed by terror, astonishment and desperation. And the
white horse, the red, the black and the pale, were crushing all with
their relentless, iron tread--the athletic man was hearing the crashing
of his broken ribs, the nursing babe was writhing at its mother's
breast, and the aged and feeble were closing their eyes forever with a
childlike sob.

"God is asleep, forgetting the world," continued the Russian. "It will
be a long time before he awakes, and while he sleeps the four feudal
horsemen of the Beast will course through the land as its only lords."

Tchernoff was overpowered by the intensity of his dramatic vision.
Springing from his seat, he paced up and down with great strides; but
his picture of the fourfold catastrophe revealed by the gloomy poet's
trance, seemed to him very weak indeed. A great painter had given
corporeal form to these terrible dreams.

"I have a book," he murmured, "a rare book." . . .

And suddenly he left the studio and went to his own quarters. He wanted
to bring the book to show to his friends. Argensola accompanied him, and
they returned in a few minutes with the volume, leaving the doors open
behind them, so as to make a stronger current of air among the hollows
of the facades and the interior patio.

Tchernoff placed his precious book under the light. It was a volume
printed in 1511, with Latin text and engravings. Desnoyers read the
title, "The Apocalypse Illustrated." The engravings were by Albert
Durer, a youthful effort, when the master was only twenty-seven years
old. The three were fascinated by the picture portraying the wild career
of the Apocalyptic horsemen. The quadruple scourge, on fantastic mount