morning is beginning
to glimmer. He pours something from a bottle into a little silver jug.
It touches his lips, the lying lips. Do they quiver a prayer ere that
awful draught is swallowed? When the sun rises they are dumb.

I neither knew this unhappy man, nor his countryman--Laertes let us
call him--who is at present in exile, having been compelled to fly from
remorseless creditors. Laertes fled to America, where he earned
his bread by his pen. I own to having a kindly feeling towards this
scapegrace, because, though an exile, he did not abuse the country
whence he fled. I have heard that he went away taking no spoil with him,
penniless almost; and on his voyage he made acquaintance with a certain
Jew; and when he fell sick, at New York, this Jew befriended him, and
gave him help and money out of his own store, which was but small. Now,
after they had been awhile in the strange city, it happened that the
poor Jew spent all his little money, and he too fell ill, and was in
great penury. And now it was Laertes who befriended that Ebrew Jew. He
fee'd doctors; he fed and tended the sick and hungry. Go to, Laertes! I
know thee not. It may be thou art justly exul patriae. But the Jew shall
intercede for thee, thou not, let us trust, hopeless Christian sinner.

Another exile to the same shore I knew: who did not? Julius Caesar
hardly owed more money than Cucedicus: and, gracious powers! Cucedicus,
how did you manage to spend and owe so much? All day he was at work for
his clients; at night he was occupied in the Public Council. He neither
had wife nor children. The rewards which he received for his orations
were enough to maintain twenty rhetoricians. Night after night I have
seen him eating his frugal meal, consisting but of a fish, a small
portion of mutton, and a small measure of Iberian or Trinacrian wine,
largely diluted with the sparkling waters of Rhenish Gaul. And this was
all he had; and this man earned and paid away talents upon talents; and
fled, owing who knows how many more! Does a man earn fifteen thousand
pounds a year, toiling by day, talking by night, having horrible unrest
in his bed, ghastly terrors at waking, seeing an officer lurking at
every corner, a sword of justice for ever hanging over his head--and
have for his sole diversion a newspaper, a lonely mutton-chop, and a
little sherry and seltzer-water? In the German stories we read how men
sell themselves to--a certain Personage, and that Personage che