“What a thing it is to be young!” he sighed, as he gazed meditatively at the still beauty of the night around him;--“To be young,--and in love with the right person! Hours go like moments--the grass is never damp--the air is never cold--there is never time enough to give all the kisses that are waiting to be given; and life is so beautiful, that we are almost able to understand why God created the universe! The rapture passes very quickly, unfortunately--with some people;--but if I ever prayed for anything--which I do not--I should pray that it might remain with Gloria! It surely cannot offend the Supreme Being who is responsible for our existence, to see one woman happy out of all the tortured millions of them! One exception to the universal rule would not make much difference! The law that the strong should prey on the weak, nearly always prevails,--but it is possible to hope and believe that on rare occasions the strong may be magnanimous!” He smoked on placidly, considering various points of philosophic meditation, and by and by fell into a gentle doze. The doze deepened into a dream which grew sombre and terrible,--and in it he thought he saw himself standing bareheaded on a raised platform above surging millions of people who all shouted with one terrific uproar of unison--“Regicide! Regicide!” He looked down upon his hands, and saw them red with blood!--he looked up to the heavens, and they were flushed with the same ominous hue. Blood!--blood!--the blood of kings,--the dust of thrones!--and he, the cause! Choked and tormented with a parching thirst, it seemed in the dream that he tried to speak,--and with all his force he cried out--“For her sake I did it! For her sake!” But the clamour of the crowd drowned his voice,--and then it was as if the coldness of death crept slowly over him,--slowly and cruelly, as though his whole body were being enclosed within an iceberg,--and he saw Gloria, the child of his love and care, laid out before him dead,--but robed and crowned like a queen, and placed on a great golden bier of state, with purple velvet falling about her, and tall candles blazing at her head and feet. And voices sang in his ears--“Gloria! Gloria in excelsis Deo!”--mingling with the muffled chanting of priests at some distant altar; and he thought he made an attempt to touch the royal velvet pall that draped her beautiful lifeless body, when he was roughly thrust back by armed men with swords and bayonets who asked him “What do you here? Are you not her murderer?”--and he cried out wildly “No, no! Never could I have harmed the child of my love! Never could I hurt a hair of her head, or cause her an hour’s sorrow! She is all I had in the world!--I loved her!--I loved her! Let me see her!--let me touch her!--let me kiss her once again!” And then the scene suddenly changed,--and it was found that Gloria was not dead at all, but walking peacefully alone in a garden of flowers, with lilies crowning her,