n destiny.

He murmured: "And how dieth the wise? As the fool."

"What do you say?" said the Pastor.

"It is a verse from the Bible."

"Then are you at peace?"

"I am at peace."

FROM A MATTRESS GRAVE

["I am a Jew, I am a Christian. I am tragedy, I am
comedy--Heraclitus and Democritus in one: a Greek, a Hebrew: an
adorer of despotism as incarnate in Napoleon, an admirer of
communism as embodied in Proudhon; a Latin, a Teuton; a beast, a
devil, a god."

"God's satire weighs heavily upon me. The Great Author of the
Universe, the Aristophanes of Heaven, was bent on demonstrating
with crushing force to me, the little earthly so-called German
Aristophanes, how my weightiest sarcasms are only pitiful
attempts at jesting in comparison with His, and how miserably I
am beneath Him in humor, in colossal mockery."]

The carriage stopped, and the speckless footman, jumping down,
inquired: "Monsieur Heine?"

The _concierge_, knitting beside the _porte cochere_, looked at him,
looked at the glittering victoria he represented, and at the _grande
dame_ who sat in it, shielding herself with a parasol from the glory
of the Parisian sunlight. Then she shook her head.

"But this is number three, Avenue Matignon?"

"Yes, but Monsieur receives only his old friends. He is dying."

"Madame knows. Take up her name.'"

The _concierge_ glanced at the elegant card. She saw "Lady"--which she
imagined meant an English _Duchesse_--and words scribbled on it in
pencil.

"It is _au cinquieme_," she said, with a sigh.

"I will take it up."

Ere he returned, Madame descended and passed from the sparkling
sunshine into the gloom of the portico, with a melancholy
consciousness of the symbolic. For her spirit, too, had its poetic
intuitions and insights, and had been trained by friendship with one
of the wittiest and tenderest women of her time to some more than
common apprehension of the greater spirit at whose living tomb she was
come to worship. Hers was a fine face, wearing the triple aristocracy
of beauty, birth, and letters. The complexion was of lustreless ivory,
the black hair wound round and round. The stateliness of her figure
completed the impression of a Roman matron.

"Monsieur Heine begs that your ladyship will do him the honor of
mounting, and will forgive him the five stories for the sake of the
view."

Her ladyship's sadness was tinctured by a faint smile at the