he would leave Russian territory, and never enter it again. There are
periodic wholesale pardonings, you know, at Kara, to clear the prisons
and make room for fresh convicts.

'Kasghine's private fortune had been confiscated. His family had
ceased all relations with him, and would do nothing for him. He came
to Paris, and had to engage in the struggle for existence, a struggle
with which he was totally unfamiliar, for which he was totally
unequipped. The only profession he knew was soldiering. He tried to
obtain a commission in the French army. International considerations,
if no others, put that out of the question. He tried to get
work,--teaching, translating. He was not a good teacher; his
translations did not please his employers. Remember, his health was
enfeebled, he was disfigured by the loss of an eye; he had spent eight
years in the mines at Kara. He began to sink. Let those blame him who
know how hard it is to swim. From borrowing, from begging, he sank to
I dare not guess what. I am afraid there can be no doubt that for a
while he served the Russian secret police as a spy; but he proved an
unremunerative spy; they turned him off. He took to drink, he sank
lower and lower, he became whatever is lowest. I had not seen him or
heard of him for years, when, yesterday, I read the announcement of
his death in the _Figaro_.'

The old man set me down at the corner of the Rue Racine. I have never
met him again; I have never learned who he was.

The other day, being in Paris, I made a pilgrimage to the Cemetery of
Montparnasse, to look at Bibi's grave. The wooden cross we had erected
over it was pied with weather-stains, the inscription more than half
obliterated--