"It's from Thessaly," he said. "My father is probably announcing his home-coming."

A second later, as he read the telegram, he paled, and gave a loud cry, crushing the bluish piece of paper in his upraised fist. The high-strung horses pranced and rose on their hind legs. In less than a minute many servants were about us, hats in hands, at a respectful distance.

"My father was killed by a political enemy!" Aristides said as he turned toward me. "You can go alone to Egypt. The guide will attend to all the details. I must go to Thessaly for revenge."

His voice startled me. It was full and round. I looked at him closely. In less than a minute he had changed from a tired boy into a passionate man. His eyes, which had looked like a quiet pool, now sprayed and radiated like a boiling sea. His face was a deep red. His movements were jerky, and his voice was husky in its impatience.

I refused to go alone to Alexandria, deciding instead to return to Paris, unless he needed me or wanted me to help him. He laughed nervously.

"Need you? My God, no! I shall hunt for Termandre all alone. It 's my revenge! Why should I share such joy with anybody?"

He rushed up the steps again and closed himself up in one of the rooms. I heard him crying, laughing, singing as I packed my belongings. The sudden change was so unusual that it made me uneasy. I knocked at his door and entered the room even before I had received an invitation. He acted like a raving maniac.

"Termandre! Termandre!" he cried over and over again. "So you have done it, ha?" Then turning to me, he

said: "Oh, you do not know what a man Termandre is! He is a descendant of that other Termandre, the great Hellenic poet. He is of noble blood, and he is crafty and clever. I shall have to hunt for him for years. But I am a Simonides. To the end of the earth, to the last of my days, I shall do nothing else; I shall think of nothing else but hunting him down. Ah, revenge! Oh, now I understand you! Now I understand all your other friends. I, too, have something before me now. I, too, have something to live for Termandre! Termandre! I have to avenge my father's death."

Aristides pronounced the name with great hatred.

"I hope you find him soon," I stammered before leaving the room.

"Soon? Why? Oh, you don't understand. You don't understand. Leave me alone. How deep the chasm between us! He is a Termandre. He knows I am a Simonides. It will take years and years."

§ 3

The Simonides, the boat on which we came, was leaving that night for Marseilles. I embarked on it. Four days later I was at Mimi's door. She was very happy to see me back.

"I knew you would not stay away from me very long," she cried, holding my hand as we swung ourselves toward the Boulevard St.-Michel. Not caring to disillusion her, I said nothing about the death of the old Simonides. I was twenty, Mimi was beautiful, and she loved me.

Paris! Paris! The Mediterranean, the Adriatic, Piræus, Athens, the gorgeous home of Aristides, the green mountains, the old monuments, even the frustrated excursion to Alexandria,

what sport! That 's why I am so alive. Now only do I feel what it means to live. To live is to hunt. Strong men hunt big game, have great ambitions, choose high peaks, and climb to the top. Weaklings are satisfied with hilltops or to sit on the mounds."

He spoke with the same fervor that

seemed to me that he did not much regret the death of his father. Somewhere in his mind lurked the idea that his father had died to offer him an object in life. Old Simonides's death was certainly more valuable to his son than his life had been.

But what a change in Aristides! What a complete change! In another

some of us used in discussions about a future début on the concert platform, the first appearance in a great rôle, the first book of poems, or when planning a great novel. So now Aristides, too, had something to live for. His life was not flickering out, like the remnant of a wick in a spluttering candle, in memories of the remote past. There was bright hope in its light. It even

two days he had swept a young lady off her feet and was busy making other conquests. On the terrace of the brasserie he recited extempore translations of old Greek poetry, never forgetting to include at least one poem of the older Termandre.

One day I found him busily engaged in his library writing an ode to the whole Termandre race. He recited it

"A cowering, gray-bearded man"

in Greek that evening. He exaggerated the value of the Termandres, as a hunter exaggerates to himself the size and cunning of the animal he is hunting.

"What has happened to Simonides?" every one asked. "Look at him, with one arm around the waist of a girl and making love to a grisette sitting across the table. He is almost human. And the way he fights with the waiters! He gambles, too, and gets excited when he loses and when he wins!" Some even believed he cheated when he played.

There was a young woman of our group who had formerly tried in vain to attract his attention. Now he was so jealous of her that he fought with fists young men courting her. When he was not carousing, Aristides worked, writing a history of the Termandre

family, from the first great poet to the last of the race. Perhaps no greater eulogy of a family was ever written. He translated it for us from the original manuscript.

About a month after his return to Paris, Aristides Simonides, standing upon a table in the Café de la Belle Etoile, was leading the chorus of a new song. The whole café was singing with him. A bottle of wine in one hand, a glass in the other, he waved his arms in broad sweeps, urging and encouraging the timid ones to raise their voices, to give themselves more completely to the singing of the song.

He was irresistible. The chorus of the song was repeated again and again by the young people surrounding him. They slurred over the last and the first words of the chorus in perpetual-motion fashion, as if there were no end to the song.

The doors of the café opened wide toward the boulevard and the terrace, and habitués and passers-by, attracted by the gaiety, forced their way into the place, and were submerged in the whirlpool of energy of which Aristides Simonides was the center.

His belle had climbed upon the table and stood near him. A few other belles, not to be outdone, did the same thing. It vitalized the whole brasserie. The waiters and the managers looked on stupefied. It was a rare sight even for them, and they had witnessed many a spontaneous student affair of this sort.

The singing continued for more than an hour, when Aristides's arms suddenly became rigid, remaining upraised, his body crouched forward, and his eyes dilated. A horrible grin changed the happy expression of his face into one of beastly savagery. During the sudden silence that followed two shrieks were heard. One from Aristides, who jumped down from the table, and one from a cowering, gray-bearded man, so horror-stricken that he seemed paralyzed. Instantly, a path was opened between the two.

As Aristides approached him, the old man's knees collapsed, and he fell into a heap, a moaning mass of flesh. Simonides, still disfigured by that horrible grin, a dagger in one uplifted hand, stood over the old man and shrieked wildly in his native tongue.

No one interfered. For a while Simonides stood over the prostrate man, who writhed on the floor like a worm. But suddenly his own body shook in convulsions, the dagger fell from his hand, and he collapsed into a near-by chair, as pale and haggard as though death and decomposition had already set in.

From the writhing mass on the floor two eyes peered and watched the collapsed man in the chair. Then the old man, still like a snake, rolled himself away a little distance, and slowly and cautiously scrambled to his feet. Instantly, Aristides jumped up, dagger flashing in his hand. The old man