the famous masterpiece, declared it to be a
spurious Pincini, probably the work of some pupil whom he had employed
in his declining years. The evidence of Deplis on the subject was
obviously worthless, as he had been under the influence of the
customary narcotics during the long process of pricking in the design.
The editor of an Italian art journal refuted the contentions of the
German expert and undertook to prove that his private life did not
conform to any modern standard of decency. The whole of Italy and
Germany were drawn into the dispute, and the rest of Europe was soon
involved in the quarrel. There were stormy scenes in the Spanish
Parliament, and the University of Copenhagen bestowed a gold medal on
the German expert (afterwards sending a commission to examine his
proofs on the spot), while two Polish schoolboys in Paris committed
suicide to show what THEY thought of the matter.

"Meanwhile, the unhappy human background fared no better than before,
and it was not surprising that he drifted into the ranks of Italian
anarchists. Four times at least he was escorted to the frontier as a
dangerous and undesirable foreigner, but he was always brought back as
the Fall of Icarus (attributed to Pincini, Andreas, early Twentieth
Century). And then one day, at an anarchist congress at Genoa, a
fellow-worker, in the heat of debate, broke a phial full of corrosive
liquid over his back. The red shirt that he was wearing mitigated the
effects, but the Icarus was ruined beyond recognition. His assailant
was severely reprimanded for assaulting a fellow-anarchist and received
seven years' imprisonment for defacing a national art treasure. As
soon as he was able to leave the hospital Henri Deplis was put across
the frontier as an undesirable alien.

"In the quieter streets of Paris, especially in the neighbourhood of
the Ministry of Fine Arts, you may sometimes meet a depressed,
anxious-looking man, who, if you pass him the time of day, will answer
you with a slight Luxemburgian accent. He nurses the illusion that he
is one of the lost arms of the Venus de Milo, and hopes that the French
Government may be persuaded to buy him. On all other subjects I
believe he is tolerably sane."

HERMANN THE IRASCIBLE--A STORY OF THE GREAT WEEP

It was in the second decade of the twentieth century, after the Great
Plague had devastated England, that Hermann the Irascible, nicknamed
also the Wise, sat on the British throne