FINIS CORONAT OPUS
N a city of the future, among a people bearing a name I know not, lived Florentian the poet, whose place was high in the retinue of Fortune. Young, noble, popular, influential, he had succeeded to a rich inheritance, and possessed the natural gifts which gain the love of women. But the sedu6fions which Florentian followed were darker and more baleful than the sedu6lions of women; for they were the seductions of knowledge and intelleftual pride. In very early years he had passed from the pursuit of natural to the pursuit of unlawful science; he had conquered power where conquest is disaster, and power servitude.
But the ambition thus gratified had elsewhere suffered check. It was the custom of this people that among their poets he who by universal acclaim outsoared all competitors should be crowned with laurel in public ceremony. Now between Florentian and this distinftion there stood a rival. Seraphin was a spirit of higher reach than Florentian, and the time was nearing fast when even the slow eyes of the people must be opened to a supremacy which Florentian himself acknowledged in his own heart. Hence arose in his lawless soul an insane passion; so that all which he had seemed to him as nothing beside that which he had not, and the compassing of this barred achievement became tohim the one worthy objed of existence. Repeated essay only proved to him the inadequacy of his native genius, and he turned for aid to the power which he served. Nor was the power of evil slow to respond. It promised him assistance that should procure him his heart's desire, but demanded in return a crime before which even the unscrupulous selfishness of Florentian paled. For he had sought and won the hand of Aster, daughter to the Lady Urania, and the sacrifice demanded from him was no other than the sacrifice of his betrothed, the playmate of his childhood. The horror of such a suggestion prevailed for a time over his unslacked ambition. But he, who believed himself a strong worker of ill, was in reality a weak follower of it; he believed himself a Vathek, he was but a Faust: continuous pressure and gradual familiarization could warp him to any sin. Moreover his love for Aster had been gradually and unconsciously sapped by the habitual praftice of evil. So God smote Florentian, that his antidote became to him his poison, and love the regenerator love the destroyer. A strong man, he might have been saved by love: a weak man, he was damned by it.
The palace of Florentian was isolated in the environs of the city; and on the night before his marriage he stood in the room known to his domestics as the Chamber of Statues. Both its appearance, and the sounds which (his servants averred) sometimes issued from it, contributed to secure for him the seclusion that he desired whenever he sought this room. It was a chamber in many ways strongly chara6leristic of its owner, a chamber ' hke his desires Hft upwards. and exalt,' but neither wide nor far-penetrat-' in?; while its furnishins: revealed his fantastic and somewhat childish fancy. At the extremity which faced the door there stood, beneath a crucifix, a small marble altar, on which burned a fire of that strange greenish tinge communicated by certain salts. Except at this extremity, the walls were draped with deep violet curtains bordered by tawmy gold, only half displayed by the partial illumination of the place. The light, was furnished from lamps of coloured glass, sparsely hung along the length of the room, but numerously clustered about the altar: lamps of diverse tints, amber, peacock-blue, and changefully mingled harmonies of green like the scales on a beetle's back. Above them v/ere coiled thinnest serpentinings of suspended crystal, hued like the tongues in a wintry hearth, flamecolour, violet, and green; so that, as in the heated current from the lamps the snakes twirled and flickered, and their bright shadows twirled upon the wall, they seemed at length to undulate their twines, and the whole altar became surrounded with a fiery fantasy of sinuous stains.
On the right hand side of the chamber there rose — appearing almost animated in the half lustre — three statues of colossal height, painted to resemble hfe; for in this matter Florentian followed the taste of the ancient Greeks. They were statues of three poets, and, not Insignificantly, of three pagan poets. The first two. Homer and ^^^schylus, presented no singularity beyond their Titanic proportions; but it was altogether otherwise with the third statue, which was unusual in conception. It was the figure of Virgil; not the Virgil whom «r know, but the Virgil of mediaeval legend, Virgil, magician and poet. It bent forwards and downwards towards the spectator; its head was uncircled by any laurel, but on the flowing locks was an impression as of where the wreath had rested; its lowered left hand proffered the magician's rod, its outstretched right poised between hght finger-tips the wreath of gilded metal whose impress seemed to linger on its hair: the a6lion was as though it were about to place the laurel on the head of some one beneath. Tliis was the carved embodiment of Florentian's fanatical ambition, a perpetual memento of the double end at which his life was aimed. On the necromancer's rod he could lay his hand, but the laurel of poetic supremacy hung yet beyond his reach. The opposite side of the chamber had but one objeft to arrest attention: a curious head upon a pedestal, a head of copper with a silver beard, the features not unlike those of a Pan, and the tongue protruded as in derision. This, with a large antique clock, completed the noticeable garniture of the room.
Up and down this apartment Florentiaji^ paced for long, liis countenance expressive of inward struggle, till his gaze fell upon the figure of Virgil. His face grew hard; with an air of sudden decision he began to a6l. Taking from its place the crucifix he threw it on the ground; taking from its pedestal the head he set it on the altar; and it seemed to Florentian as if he reared therewith a demon on the altar of his heart, round which also coiled burning serpents. He sprinkled, in the flame which burned before the head, some drops from a vial; he wounded his arm, and moistened from the wound the idol's tongue, and, stepping back, he set his foot upon the prostrate cross.
A darkness rose like a fountain from the altar, and curled downward through the room as wine through water, until every light was obliterated. Then from out the darkness grew gradually the visage of the idol, soaked with lire; its face was as the planet Mars, its beard as white-hot wire that seethed and crept with heat; and there issued from the lips a voice that threw Florentian on the ground: ' Whom seekest thou? ' Twice was the question repeated; and then, as if the display of power w^ere sufficient, the gloom gathered up its edges like a mantle and swept inwards towards the altar; where it settled in a cloud so dense as to eclipse even the visage of fire. A voice came forth again; but a voice that sounded not the same; a voice that seemed to have withered in crossing the confines of existence, and to traverse illimitable remotenesses beyond the imagining of man; a voice melancholy with a boundless cahii, the calm not of a crystalline peace but of a marmoreal despair, * Knowest thou me; what I am? '
Vanity of man! lie who had fallen prostrate before this power now rose to his feet with the haughty answer, ' My deity and my slave! '
The unmoved voice held on its way:
' Scarce high enough for thy deity, too high for thy slave, I am pain exceeding great; and the desolation that is at the heart of things, in the barren heath and the barren soul. I am terror vvithout beauty, and force without strength, and sin without delight. I beat my wings against the cope of Eternity, as thou thine against the window of Time. Thou knowest me not, but I know thee, Florentian, what thou art and what thou wouldst. Thou wouldst have and wouldst not give, thou wouldst not render, yet w^ouldst receive. This cannot be with me. Thou art but half baptized with my baptism, yet wouldst have thy supreme desire. In thine own blood thou wast baptized, and I gave my power to serve thee; thou wouldst have my spirit to inspire thee — thou must be baptized in blood not thine own! '
' Any way but one way! ' said Florentian, shuddering.
' One way: no other way. Knowest thou not that in wedding thee to her thou givest me a rival? Thinkest thou my spirit can dwell beside her spirit? 'I'hou must renounce her or me: aye, thou wilt lose not only all thou dreadest to sin for, but all thou hast alreadysinned for. Render me her body for my temple, and I render thee my spirit to inhabit it. This supreme price thou must pay for thy supreme wish. I ask not her soul. Give that to the God Whom she serves, give her body to me whom thou servest. Why hesitate? It is too late to hesitate, for the time is at hand to aft. Choose, before this cloud dissolve which is now dissolving. But remember: thine ambition thou mightest have had; love thou art too deep damned to have.'
The cloud turned from black to grey. ' I consent! ' cried Florentian, impetuously.
Three years — what years! since I planted in the grave the laurel which will soon now reach its height; and the fatal memory is heavy upon me, the shadow of my laurel is as the shadow of funeral yev/. If confession indeed give ease, I, who am deprived of all other confession, may yet find some appeasement in confessing to this paper. I am not penitent; yet I will do fiercest penance. W^ith the scourge of inexorable recolledfion I will tear open my scars. With the cuts of a pitiless analysis I make the post-mortem examen of my crime.
Even now can I feel the passions of that^ moment when (since the forefated hour was not till midnight), leaving her under the influence of the merciful potion which should save her from the agony of knowledge and me from the agony of knowing that she knew, I sought, in tlie air of night and in hurrying swiftness, the resolution of which she had deprived me. The glow-worm lamps went out as I sped by, the stars in rainy pools leaped up and went out, too, as if both worm and star were quenched by the shadow of my passing, until I stopped exhausted on the bridge, and looked down into the river. How dark it ran, how deep, how pausclcss; how unruffled by a memor)' of its ancestral hills! Wisely unruffled, perchance. When it first danced down from its native source, did it not predestine all the issues of its current, every darkness through which it should flow, every bough which it should break, every leaf which it should whirl down in its way? Could it, if it would, revoke its waters, and run upward to the holy hills? No; the first step includes all sequent steps; when I did my first evil, I did also this evil; years ago had this shaft been launched, though it was but now curving to its mark; years ago had I smitten her, though she was but now staggering to her fall. Yet I hesitated to a6t v/ho had already afted, I rufiicd mv current which I could not draw in. When at length, after long wandering, I retraced my steps, I had not resolved, I had recognized that I could
It was close on midnight, and I felt her only, (she was not visible,) as she lay at the feet of Virgil, magician and poet. The lamp had fallen from my hand, and 1 dared not relume it. I even placed myself between her and the light of the altar though the salt-green fire was but the spe6lre of a tiame. I reared my arm; I shook; I faltered. At that moment, with a deadly voice, the accomplice-hour gave forth its sinister command.
I swear I struck not the first blow. Some violence seized my hand, and drove the poniard down. Whereat she cried; and I, frenzied, dreading detection, dreading, above all, her wakening, — I struck again, and again she cried; and yet again, and yet again she cried. Then — her eyes opened. I saw them open, through the gloom I saw them; through the gloom they were revealed to me, that 1 might see them to my hour of death. An awful recognition, an unspeakable consciousness grew slowly into them. Motionless with horror they were fixed on mine, motionless with horror mine were fixed on them, as she wakened into death.
How long had I seen them? I saw them still. There was a buzzing in my brain as if a bell had ceased to toll. How long had it ceased to toll? I know not. Has any bell been tolling? I know not. All my senses are resolved into one sense, and that is frozen to those eyes. Silence now, at least; abysmal silence; except the sound (or is the sound in me?), the sound of dripping blood; except that the flame upon the altar sputters, and hisses, and bickers, as if it licked its jaws. Yes, there is another sound — hush, hark! — It is the throbbing of my heart. Not — no, nevermore the throbbing of her heart! The loud pulse dies slowly away, as I hope my life is dying; and again I hear the Hcking of the flame.
A mirror hung opposite to me, and for a second, in some mysterious manner, without ever ceasing to behold the eyes, I beheld also the mirrored flame. The hideous, green, writhing tongue was streaked and flaked with red! I swooned, if swoon it can be called; swooned to the mirror, swooned to all about me, swooned to myself, but sw^ooned not to those eyes.
Strange, that no one has taken me, me for such long hours shackled in a gaze! It is night again, is it not? Nay, I remember, I have swooned; what now stirs me from my stupor? Light; the guilty gloom is shuddering at the first sick rays of day. Light? not that, not that; anything but that. Ah! the horrible traitorous light, that will denounce me to myself, that will unshroud to me my dead, that will show me all the monstrous fa6l. I swooned indeed.
When I recovered consciousness, It was risen from the ground, and kissed me with the kisses of Its mouth.
They told me during tlic day that the great bell of the cathedral, though no man rang it, had sounded thrice at midnight. It was not a fancy, tlierefore, that I heard a bell toll tbeir, where — when she cried three times. And they asked me jestingly if marriage was ageing me already. I took a mirror to find what they meant. On my forehead were graven three deep wrinkles; and in the locks which fell over my right shoulder J beheld, long and prominent, three white hiirs. I carry those marks to this hour. They and a dark stain on the floor at the feet of Virgil are the sole v/itnesses to that night.
It is three years, I have said, since then; and how have I prospered? Has Tartarus fulfilled its terms of contrad, as I faithfully and frightfully fulfilled mine 1 Yes. In the course which I have driven through every obstacle and every scruple, I have followed at least no phantom-lure. I have risen to the heights of my aspiration, I have overtopped my sole rival. True, it is a tin:el renown; true, Seraphin is still the light-bearer. I but a dragon vomiting infernal fire and smoke v/hich sets the crowd a-gaping. But it is your nature to gape, my good friend of the crowd, and I would have you gape ^ at me. If you prefer to Jove Jove's imitator, what use to be Jove? ' Gods,' you cry; * what a clatter of swift-footed steeds, and clangour of rapid roUing brazen wheels, and vibrating glare of lamps! Surely, the thundci-mancd horses of heaven, the chariot of Olympus; and you must be the mighty Thunderer himself, with the flashing of his awful bolts! ' Not so, my short-sighted friend: very laughably otherwise. It is but vain old Salmoneus, gone mad in EHs. I know you, and I know myself. I have what I would have. I work for the present: let Seraphin have the moonshine future, if he lust after it. Present renown means present power; it suffice? me that I am supreme in the eyes of my fellowmen. A year since was the laurel decreed to me, and a day ordained for the ceremony: it was only postponed to the present year because of what they thought my calamity. They accounted it calamity, and knew not that it was deHverance. For, my ambition achieved, the compaft by which I had achieved it ended, and the demon who had inspired forsook me. Discovery was impossible. A death sudden but natural: how could men know that it was death of the Two-years-dead? I drew breath at length in freedom. For two years It had spoken to me with her Hps, used her gestures, smjled her smile: — ingenuity of hell! — for two years the breathing Murder wrought before me, and tortured me in a hundred ways with the living desecration of her form.
Now, relief unspeakable! that vindidive sleuth-hound of my sin has at last lagged from the trail y I have had a year of respite, of release from all torments but those native to my breast; in four days I shall receive the solemn gift of what I already virtually hold; and now, surely, I exult in fruition. If the approach of possession brought not also the approach of recolleftion, if — Rest, O rest, sad ghost! Is thy grave not deep enough, or the world wide enough, that thou must needs walk the haunted precinfts of my heart? Are not specSlres there too manv, without thee?
Later in the same day. A strange thing has happened to me — if I ought not rather to write a strange nothing. After laying down my pen, I rose and went to the window. I felt the need of some distraftion, of escaping from myself. The day, a day in the late autumn, a day of keen winds but bright sunshine, tempted me out: so, putting on cap and mantle, I sallied into the country, where winter pitched his tent on fields yet reddened with the rout of summer. I chose a sheltered lane, whose hedgerows, little visited by the gust, still retained much verdure; and I walked along, gazing with a sense of physical refreshment at the now rare green. As my eyes so wandered, while the mind for a time let slip its care, they were casually caught by the somewhat peculiar trace which a leaf-eating caterpillar had left on one of the leaves. I carelessly outstretched my hand, plucked from the hedge the leaf, and examined it as I strolled. The marking — a large marking which traversed the greater part of the surface — took the shape of a rude but distinft figure, the figure 3. Such a circumstance, thought I, might by a superstitious man be given a personal appHcation; and I fell idly to speculating how it might be applied to myself.
Curious! — I stirred uneasily; I felt my cheek pale, and a chill which was not from the weather creep through me. Three years since that; three strokes — three cries — three tolls of the bell — three lines on my brow — three white hairs in my head! I laughed: but the laugh rang false. Then I said, ' Childishness,' threw the leaf away, walked on, hesitated, walked back, picked it up, walked on again, looked at it again. Then, finding I could not laugh myself out of the fancy, I began to reason myself out of it. Even were a supernatural warning probable, a warning refers not to the past but to the future. This referred only to the past, it told me only what I knew already. Could it refer to the future? To the bestowal of the laurel? No; that was four days hence, and on the same day was the anniversary of what I feared to name, even in thought. Suddenly I stood still, stabbed to the heart by an idea. I was wrong. The enlaurelling had been postponed to a year from the day on which my supposed affliftion was discovered. Now this, although it took place on the day of terrible anniversary, was not known till the day ensuingv Consequently, though it wanted four days to the bestowal of the laurel, it lacked but three days to the date of my crime. The chain of coincidence was complete. I dropped the leaf as if it had death in it, and strove to evade, by rapid motion and thinking of other things, the idea which appalled me. But, as a man walking in a mist circles continually to the point from which he started, so, in whatever direftion I turned the footsteps of my mind, they wandered back to that unabandonable thought. I returned trembling to the house.
Of course it is nothing; a mera coincidence, that is all. Yes; a mere coincidence, perhaps, if it had been one coincidence. But when it is seven coincidences! Three stabs, three cries, three tolls, three lines, three hairs, three years, three days; and on the very date when these coincidences meet, the key to them is put into my hands by the casual work of an inseft on a casual leaf, casually plucked. This day alone of all days in my life the scattered rays converge; they are instantly focussed and flashed on my mind by a leaf! It may be a coincidence, only a coincidence; but it is a coincidence at which my marrow sets. I wiU write no further till the day comes. If by that time anything has happened to confirm my dread, I wiU record what has chanced.
One thing broods over me with the oppression of certainty. If this incident be indeed a warning that but three days stand as barriers between me and nearing justice, then doom will come upon me at the unforgettable minute when it came on her.
^he third day. — It Is an hour before midnight, and I sit in my room of statues. I dare not sleep if I could sleep; and I write, because the rushing thoughts move slower through the turnstile of expression. I have chosen this place to make what may be my last vigil and last notes, partly from obedience to an inexplicable yet comprehensible fascination, partly from a deliberate resolve. I would face the Hghtning of vengeance on tlie very spot where I most tempt its stroke, that if it strike not I may cease to fear its striking. Here then I sit to tease with final questioning the Sibyl of my destiny. With final questioning; for never since the first shock have I ceased to question her, nor she to return me riddHng answers. She unrolls her volume till my sight and heart ache at it together. I have been struck by innumerable deaths; I have perished under a fresh doom every day, every hour — in these last hours, every minute. I write in black thought; and tear, as soon as written, guess after guess at fate till the floor of my brain is littered with them.
That the deed has been discovered — that seems to me most probable, that is the conjecture which oftenest recurs. Appallingly probable! Yet how improbable, could I only reason it. Aye, but I cannot reason it. What reason will be left me, if I survive this hour?
What, indeed, have I to do with reason, or has reason to do with this, where all is beyond reason, where the very foundation of my dread is unassailable simply because it is unreasonable? What crime can be interred so cunningly, but it will toss in its grave, and tumble the sleeked earth above it? Or some hidden witness may have beheld me, or the prudently-kept imprudence of this writing may have encountered some unsuspefted eye. In any case the issue is the same; the hour which struck down her; will also strike down me: I shall perish on the scaffold or at the stake, unaided by my occult powers; for I serve a master who is the prince of cowards, and can fight only from ambush. Be it by these ways, or by any of the countless intricacies that my restless mind has unravelled, the vengeance will come: its occasion may be an accident of the instant, a wandering mote of chance; but the vengeance is pre-ordained and inevitable. When the Alpine avalanche is poised for descent, the most trivial cause — a casual shout — will suffice to start the loosened ruin on its way; and so the mere echoes of the clock that beats out midnight will disintegrate upon me the precipitant wrath.
Repent? Nay, nay, it could not have been otherwise than it was; the defile was close behind me, I could but go forward, forward. If I was merciless to her, was I not more merciless to myself; could I hesitate to sacrifice her life, vvKo did not hesitate to?acrifice my soul? I do not repent, I cannot repent; it is a thing for inconsequent weaklings. To repent your purposes is comprehensible, to repent your deeds most futile. To shake the tree, and then not gather the fruit — a fool's ad! Aye, but if the fruit be not worth the gathering? If this fame was not worth the sinning for — this fame, with the multitude's clapping hands halfdrowned by the growl of winds that comes in gusts through the unbarred gate of hell? If I am miserable with it, and might have been happy without it? With her, without ambition — yes, it might have been. Wife and child! I have more in my heart than I have hitherto written. I have an intermittent pang of loss. Yes, I, murderer, worse than murderer, have still passions that are not deadly, but tender.
I met a child to-day; a child with great candour of eyes. They who talk of children's instin6ls are at fault: she knew not that hell was in my soul, she knew only that softness was in my gaze. She had been gathering wild flowers, and offered them to me. To me, to me! I was inexpressibly touched and pleased, curiously touched and pleased. I spoke to her gently, and with open confidence she began to talk. Fleaven knows it was little enough she talked of! Commonest common things, pettiest childish things, fondest foolish things. Of her school, her toys, the strawberries in her garden, her little brothers and sisters — nothing, surely, to Interest any man. Yet I listened enchanted. How simple it all was; how strange, how wonderful, how sweet! And she knew not that mv eyes w^ere anhungerod of her, she knew not that my ears were gluttonous of her speech, she could not have understood it had I told her; none could, none. For all this exquisiteness is among the commonplaces of life to other men, like the raiment they indue at rising, like the bread they weary of eating, like the daisies they trample under blind feet; knowing not what raiment is to him who has felt the ravening wind, knowing not what bread ii to him who has lacked all bread, knowing not what daisies are to him whose feet have wandered in grime. How can these elves be to such men what they are to me. who am damned to the eternal loss of them? Why was I never told that the laurel could soothe no hunger, that the laurel could staunch no pang, that the laurel could return no kiss? But needed I to be told it, did I not know it? Yes, my brain knew it, my heart knew it not. And now
Just! they are the words of that other traf^cker in his own soul.* Me, like him, the time tracks sv\aftly down; I can fly no farther, I fall
• FausttiSj in tlie last scene of Marlowe's play.
exhausted, the fanged hour fastens on my throat: they will break into the room, my guilt will burst its grave and point at me; I shall be seized, I shall be condemned, I shall be executed; I shall be no longer I, but a nameless lump on which they pasture worms. Or perhaps the hour will herald some yet worser thing, some sudden death, some undreamable, ghastly surprise — ah! what is that at the door there, that, that with her eyes? Nothing: the door is shut. Surely, surely, I am not to die now? Destiny steals upon a man asleep or off his guard, not when he is awake, as I am awake, at watch, as I am at watch, wide-eyed, vigilant, alert. Oh, miserable hope! Watch the eaves of your house, to bar the melting of the snow; or guard the gateways of the clouds, to bar the forthgoing of the lightning; or guard the four quarters of the heavens, to bar the way of the winds: but what prescient hand can close the Hecatompyloi of fate, what might arrest the hurrying retributions whose multitudinous tramplings converge upon me in a hundred presages, in a hundred shrivellin;:^ menaces, dowm all the echoing avenues of doom? It is but a question of which shall arrive the fleetest and the first. I cease to think. I am all a waiting and a fear. Twelve I
At half-past tzco. Midnight is stricken, and I am unstricken. Guilt, indeed, makes babies of the wisest. Nothing happened; absolutely nothing. For two hours I watched with lessening expeftance: still nothing. I laughed aloud between sudden light-heartedness and scorn. Ineffable fool that I was, I had conjured up death, judgement, doom — heaven knows what, all because a caterpillar had crawled along a leaf! And then, as I might have done before had not terror vitiated my reason, I made essay whether I still retained my power. I retain it. Let me set down for my own enhardiment what the oracle replied to my questioning.
' Have I not promised and kept my promise, shall I not promise and keep? You would bs crowned and you shall be crowned. Does your way to achievement lie through misery? — is not that the way to all worth the achieving? Are not half the mill-wheels of the world turned by waters of pain? Mountain summit that would rise into the clouds, can you not suffer the eternal snows? If your heart fail you, turn; I chain you not. I will restore you your oath. I will cancel your bond. Go to the God Who' has tenderness for such weaklings: my service requires the strong.'
What a slave of my fancy was I! Excellent fool, what! pay the forfeit of my sin and forgo the recompense, recoil from the very gates of conquest? I fear no longer: the crisis is past, the day of promise has begun, I go forw^ard to my destiny; I triumph.
Florcntian laid down his pen, and passed into dreams. He saw the crowd, the throne, the waiting laurel, the sunshine, the flashing of rich robes; he heard the universal shout of acclaim, he felt the flush of intoxicating pride. He rose, his form dilating with exultation, and passed, lamp in hand, to the foot of the third statue. The colossal figure leaned above him with its outstretched laurel, its proffered wand, its melancholy face and flowing hair; so hfelike was it that in the wavering flame of the lamp the laurel seemed to move. ' At length, Virgil,' said Florentian, ' at length I am equal with you; Virgil, magician and poet, your crown shall descend on me! '
One.. Two.. Three! The strokes of the great clock shook the chamber, shook the statues; and after the strokes had ceased, the echoes were still prolonged. Was it only an echo?
Or — zvas it the cathedral hell?
It zvas the cathedral bell. Yet a third time, sombre, surly, ominous as the bay of a nearing bloodhound, the sound came down the wind.
Horror clutched his heart. He looked up at the statue. He turned to fly. But a few hairs, tangled round the lowered wand, for a single instant held him like a cord. He knew, without seeing, that they were the three white hairs.
When, later in the day, a deputation of officials came to escort Florentian to the place fixed for his coronation, they were informed that he had been all night in his Chamber of Statues, nor had he yet made his appearance. They waited while the servant left to fetch him. The man was away some time, and they talked gaily as they waited: a bird beat its wings at the window; through the open door came in a stream of sunlight, and the fragmentary song of a young girl passing:
Oh, syne she tripped, and syne she ran (The water-lily's a hghtsome flower). All for joy and sunshine weather The lily and Marjorie danced together, As he came down from Langley Tower.
There's a blackbird sits on Langley Tower, And a throstle on Glenlindy's tree;
The man came running back at last, with a blanched face and a hushed voice. * Come,' he said, ' and see! '
At the feet of Virgil's statue Florentian lay dead. A dark pool almost hid that dark stain on the ground, the three lines on his forehead were etched in blood, and across the shattered brow lay a ponderous gilded wreath; while over the extincrnishcd altar- fire the idol seemed to quiver its derisive tongue.
' He is already laurelled,' said one, breaking at length the silence; ' we come too late.'
Too late. The crown of Virgil, magician and poet, had descended on him.