poodle, his faithfulcompanion, might have the bones. Bartolommeo
never complained of the noise. If the huntsmen's horns and baying

dogs disturbed his sleep during his illness, he only said, "Ah!
Don Juan has come back again." Never on earth has there been a

father so little exacting and so indulgent; and, in consequence,
young Belvidero, accustomed to treat his father unceremoniously,

had all the faults of a spoiled child. He treated old Bartolommeo
as a wilful courtesan treats an elderly adorer; buying indemnity

for insolence with a smile, selling good-humor, submitting to be
loved.

Don Juan, beholding scene after scene of his younger years, saw
that it would be a difficult task to find his father's indulgence

at fault. Some new-born remorse stirred the depths of his heart;
he felt almost ready to forgive this father now about to die for

having lived so long. He had an accession of filial piety, like a
thief's return in thought to honesty at the prospect of a million

adroitly stolen.
Before long Don Juan had crossed the lofty, chilly suite of rooms

in which his father lived; the penetrating influences of the damp
close air, the mustiness diffused by old tapestries and presses

thickly covered with dust had passed into him, and now he stood
in the old man's antiquated room, in the repulsive presence of

the deathbed, beside a dying fire. A flickering lamp on a Gothic
table sent broad uncertain shafts of light, fainter or brighter,

across the bed, so that the dying man's face seemed to wear a
different look at every moment. The bitter wind whistled through

the crannies of the ill-fitting casements; there was a smothered
sound of snow lashing the windows. The harsh contrast of these

sights and sounds with the scenes which Don Juan had just quitted
was so sudden that he could not help shuddering. He turned cold

as he came towards the bed; the lamp flared in a sudden vehement
gust of wind and lighted up his father's face; the features were

wasted and distorted; the skin that cleaved to their bony
outlines had taken wan livid hues, all the more ghastly by force

of contrast with the white pillows on which he lay. The muscles
about the toothless mouth had contracted with pain and drawn

apart the lips; the moans that issued between them with appalling
energy found an accompaniment in the howling of the storm

without.
In spite of every sign of coming dissolution, the most striking

thing about the dying face was its incredible power. It was no
ordinary spirit that wrestled there with Death. The eyes glared

with strange fixity of gaze from the cavernous sockets hollowed
by disease. It seemed as if Bartolommeo sought to kill some enemy

sitting at the foot of his bed by the intent gaze of dying eyes.
That steady remorseless look was the more appalling because the

head that lay upon the pillow was passive and motionless as a
skull upon a doctor's table. The outlines of the body, revealed

by the coverlet, were no less rigid and stiff; he lay there as
one dead, save for those eyes. There was something automatic

about the moaning sounds that came from the mouth. Don Juan felt
something like shame that he must be brought thus to his father's

bedside, wearing a courtesan's bouquet, redolent of the fragrance
of the banqueting-chamber and the fumes of wine.

"You were enjoying yourself!" the old man cried as he saw his
son.

Even as he spoke the pure high notes of a woman's voice,
sustained by the sound of the viol on which she accompanied her

song, rose above the rattle of the storm against the casements,
and floated up to the chamber of death. Don Juan stopped his ears

against the barbarous answer to his father's speech.
"I bear you no grudge, my child," Bartolommeo went on.

The words were full of kindness, but they hurt Don Juan; he could
not pardon this heart-searching goodness on his father's part.

"What a remorseful memory for me!" he cried, hypocritically.
"Poor Juanino," the dying man went on, in a smothered voice, "I

have always been so kind to you, that you could not surely desire
my death?"

"Oh, if it were only possible to keep you here by giving up a
part of my own life!" cried Don Juan.

("We can always SAY this sort of thing," the spendthrift thought;
"it is as if I laid the whole world at my mistress' feet.")

The thought had scarcely crossed his mind when the old poodle
barked. Don Juan shivered; the response was so intelligent that

he fancied the dog must have understood him.
"I was sure that I could count upon you, my son!" cried the dying

man. "I shall live. So be it; you shall be satisfied. I shall
live, but without depriving you of a single day of your life."

"He is raving," thought Don Juan. Aloud he added, "Yes, dearest
father, yes; you shall live, of course, as long as I live, for

your image will be for ever in my heart."
"It is not that kind of life that I mean," said the old noble,

summoning all his strength to sit up in bed; for a thrill of
doubt ran through him, one of those suspicions that come into

being under a dying man's pillow. "Listen, my son," he went on,
in a voice grown weak with that last effort, "I have no more wish

to give up life than you to give up wine and mistresses, horses
and hounds, and hawks and gold----"

"I can well believe it," thought the son; and he knelt down by
the bed and kissed Bartolommeo's cold hands. "But, father, my

dear father," he added aloud, "we must submit to the will of
God."

"I am God!" muttered the dying man.
"Do not blaspheme!" cried the other, as he saw the menacing

expression on his father's face. "Beware what you say; you have
received extreme unction, and I should be inconsolable if you

were to die before my eyes in mortal sin."
"Will you listen to me?" cried Bartolommeo, and his mouth

twitched.
Don Juan held his peace; an ugly silence prevailed. Yet above the

muffled sound of the beating of the snow against the windows rose
the sounds of the beautiful voice and the viol in unison, far off

and faint as the dawn. The dying man smiled.
"Thank you," he said, "for bringing those singing voices and the

music, a banquet, young and lovely women with fair faces and dark
tresses, all the pleasure of life! Bid them wait for me; for I am

about to begin life anew."
"The delirium is at its height," said Don Juan to himself.

"I have found out a way of coming to life again," the speaker
went on. "There, just look in that table drawer, press the spring

hidden by the griffin, and it will fly open."
"I have found it, father."

"Well, then, now take out a little phial of rock crystal."
"I have it."

"I have spent twenty years in----" but even as he spoke the old
man felt how very near the end had come, and summoned all his

dying strength to say, "As soon as the breath is out of me, rub
me all over with that liquid, and I shall come to life again."

"There is very little of it," his son remarked.
Though Bartolommeo could no longer speak, he could still hear and

see. When those words dropped from Don Juan, his head turned with
appalling quickness, his neck was twisted like the throat of some

marble statue which the sculptor had condemned to remain
stretched out for ever, the wide eyes had come to have a ghastly

fixity.
He was dead, and in death he lost his last and sole illusion.

He had sought a shelter in his son's heart, and it had proved to
be a sepulchre, a pit deeper than men dig for their dead. The