"A moment of passion murdered Margaret de Saluce." "But God is good; He does not create to torture; He does not bring the dead back to confront them with their crimes." "Know you that there is a God?" replied the whisperer. "And not a Fate working inexorably and by law?" "Cease!" I replied, "Let there be a Fate. I am a living man with a will. No dead fate working by law shall drag me against my will, or move me to another purpose than my own. I will not--I will not!" This mental dialogue had brought me a long way. I was called to my senses by a bright light illuminating what seemed a river of blood stretching across the pavement. It was a red carpet, and the great house from whose door it was laid down was the Prussian Embassy. A carriage, flanked by a squadron of Cent Gardes, was at the pavement, and a man was leaving the Embassy. It was Napoleon, who had been dining privately with the Prussian Ambassador. He was in evening dress, covered by a dark overcoat; his hat-brim was over his eyes, and he held a cigarette between his lips. When Napoleon wore his hat in this fashion, with the brim covering his eyes like a penthouse, the whole figure of the man became sinister and full of fate. I would sooner a flock of black birds had crossed my path than that mysterious figure in the broad-brimmed, tall hat, beneath which in the darkness the profile showed vaguely, yet distinctly, like the profile on some time-battered coin of Imperial Rome, some coin on which the Imperial face alone remains asking the dweller in a new age: Who is this? I watched him getting into his carriage and the carriage driving away, surrounded by the glittering sabres of the Cent Gardes; then I returned home. This, it will be remembered, was the night of the 1st of October. * * * * * On the 4th of October, three days after, I was sitting at my club, reading a newspaper, when the Comte de Brissac proposed a game of écarté. I take cards seriously; the gain or loss of money is nothing to me beside the gain or loss of the game. That is why, perhaps, I am often successful. There were several other players in the room, and a good many loungers looking on at the games, several around our table, of whom I did not take the slightest notice, so immersed was I in the play. I lost. Never had I such bad luck. The cards declared themselves against me; some evil influence was at work. At the end of half an hour, during a pause in the game, and after having lost a good sum of money to De Brissac, I looked up, and for the first time noticed the people around us. Right opposite to me, standing behind De Brissac, and looking me full in the face, was Baron Carl von Lichtenberg. The surprising thing was that I was not surprised. My unconscious self seemed to have recognised the fact that he was there all the time, whilst the conscious self was sublimely indifferent to everything but the cards.