Page:Man — Fragments of Forgotten History.djvu/17

Rh and bewilderment were sped across long stretches of sea and land.

The vision was drowned in the tide of returning sense, but the ear caught the fading words, "Thy path of duty leads to the West."

Obedient steps were bent westward and the faithful pupil found himself among the ill-fated splendour of Paris―Ah! Paris, Paris! thou must die that France may live!―France, alone among her many enemies, and the worst of them thou!

Ghost-like the ascetic haunted the homes of wealth and pleasure, everywhere regarded more as the mysterious hand that recorded the doom of the Assyrian monarch than a human being willing to work and bear.

One evening among the gaeieties of Parisian salon, with all to charm the sense and sicken the soul, an airy tongue syllabled his name:—

"Come, come to my help!"

The far-away voice drowned the music and obscured the dancing shapes. The bright sallies of wit remained unheard, the gay companions unheeded. The two strangers met and were strangers no more, the fragments united together, the torn scroll became whole.

The mystic scroll was all in quaint characters and in an unknown tongue. Many an anxious day and many a watchful night has it cost the fellow, students, united in a strange land, to decipher its meaning. The following pages represent me result.