he was devoured with fever, and haunted with dream after dream that
tempted him to pursue them, and mocked him at the very moment when he
thought that he had reached them. The struggle wore him out, life and
limb. He was seen day by day to wither, and grow weaker. The end was
not far. On the last day of his illness, a strange fancy seized him: he
would get up--rushed out of the château, and began to run wildly across
the country, as if he were chasing something before him that no one, save
himself could see. "Sire!" cried he, hoarsely, "deliver me from the
obscurity of this shepherd's life! Sire! do listen to me! I am John
Durer! I have studied everything! I have learned everything! I have
fathomed everything! Raise me from my lowly condition, sire! Who knows?
one day you may have no one among your servants more devoted, more
enlightened, than your poor John Durer!"

The thing that he pursued, fled--fled. Durer ran after it more wildly as
he grew weaker, trying to raise his voice higher and higher, and
stretching out his arms more and more eagerly. They were now at the
Valley of Bushes. "Sire!" cried he once again.

"John Durer, scholar, of the village near Haerlem," replied a voice from
the shadows of the wood, "his Majesty the Emperor does not love people
who have lost their memory."

The whole past--the long, long, years of his ambitious and glorious and
ungrateful life--seemed in one instant to come back, as in a flash of
lightning, before the weary, distracted man; and with this, too, the
consciousness of his present state. He uttered one terrible cry, and
fell down dead.