The Chief of the Guards stretched out his arms with a shrug.

"Exactly at one o'clock in the afternoon, your Excellency," he said.

Half surprised, half commending the work of the police, who had
managed everything skilfully, the Minister shook his head, a morose
smile upon his thick, dark lips, and still smiling obediently, and not
desiring to interfere with the plans of the police, he hastily made
ready, and went out to pass the night in some one else's hospitable
palace. His wife and his two children were also removed from the
dangerous house, before which the bomb-throwers were to gather upon
the following day.

While the lights were burning in the palace, and courteous, familiar
faces were bowing to him, smiling and expressing their concern, the
dignitary experienced a sensation of pleasant excitement-he felt as if
he had already received, or was soon to receive, some great and
unexpected reward. But the people went away, the lights were
extinguished, and through the mirrors, the lace-like and fantastic
reflection of the electric lamps on the street, quivered across the
ceiling and over the walls. A stranger in the house, with its
paintings, its statues and its silence, the light-itself silent and
indefinite-awakened painful thoughts in him as to the vanity of bolts
and guards and walls. And then, in the dead of night, in the silence
and solitude of a strange bedroom, a sensation of unbearable fear
swept over the dignitary.

He had some kidney trouble, and whenever he grew strongly agitated,
his face, his hands and his feet became swollen. Now, rising like a
mountain of bloated flesh above the taut springs of the bed, he felt,