The Dynamiter. More new arabian nights

The prince had turned about upon my entrance, and re­garded me certainly with no alarm, but with a profundity of wonder which almost robbed me of my self-possession. “My dear madam,” he cried at last, “and who the devil are you?”

“And yet, madam,” returned the prince, “your mercy may be cruelty disguised. Where the honour is lost, it is, at least, superfl uous to prolong the life.”

“If you had led a life as changeable as mine, your highness,” I replied, “you would hold a very different opinion. For my part, and after whatever extremity of misfortune or disgrace, I should still count to-morrow worth a trial.”

He paused, as though staggered in his purpose.

“And yet, madam,” said he, “we cannot continue to remain in ignorance of what has passed.”

“Nay, madam,” he replied, smiling, “for so brave a lady, you surprise me. Would you have me, then, send others where I fear to go myself?”

There we found our patient, still, indeed, deadly pale, but vastly recovered and already seated on a chair. He held out both his hands with a most pitiful gesture of interrogation.

“He is dead,” said the prince.

“Alas!” cried the young man, “and it should be I! What do I do, thus lingering on the stage I have disgraced, while he, my sure comrade, blameworthy indeed for much, but yet the soul of fi delity, has judged and slain himself for an invol­untary fault? Ah, sir,” said he, “and you too, madam, without whose cruel help I should be now beyond the reach of my ac­cusing conscience, you behold in me the victim equally of my own faults and virtues. I was born a hater of injustice; from my most tender years my blood boiled against heaven when I beheld the sick, and against men when I witnessed the sor­rows of the poor; the pauper’s crust stuck in my throat when I sat down to eat my dainties, and the cripple child has set me weeping. What was there in that but what was noble? and yet observe to what a fall these thoughts have led me! Year after year this passion for the lost besieged me closer. What hope was there in kings? what hope in these well-feathered classes that now roll in money? I had observed the course of history; I knew the burgess, our ruler of to-day, to be base, cowardly, and dull; I saw him, in every age, combine to pull down that which was immediately above and to prey upon those that were below; his dulness, I knew, would ultimately bring about his ruin; I knew his days were numbered, and yet how was I to wait? how was I to let the poor child shiver in the rain? The better days, indeed, were coming, but the child would die before that. Alas, your highness, in surely no ungenerous im-

patience I enrolled myself among the enemies of this unjust and doomed society; in surely no unnatural desire to keep the fi res of my philanthropy alight, I bound myself by an ir­revocable oath.

position. An oath, so light a thing to swear, so grave a thing to break: an oath, taken in the heat of youth, repented with what sobbings of the heart, but yet in vain repented, as the years go on: an oath, that was once the very utterance of the truth of God, but that falls to be the symbol of a meaningless and empty slav­ery; such is the yoke that many young men joyfully assume, and under whose dead weight they live to suffer worse than death.

“But you, madam,” continued the young man, addressing himself more directly to myself, “were doubtless born to save the prince and to confound our purposes. My life you have prolonged; and by turning the key on my companion, you have made me the author of his death. He heard the hour strike; he was impotent to help; and thinking himself forfeit to honour, thinking that I should fall alone upon his highness and perish for lack of his support, he has turned his pistol on himself.”