Not long after this, he ceased to know his wife, whom he called for without ceasing; then he would bury himself deep in reading, without recollecting a word of what he had read when he had ended.  All that was left to him was the memory of his young desires; the power of retaining anything had passed away utterly.  His ardor began to change into frenzy; 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 chateau, 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.

VII.

Three months later, when his orphans were led by their mother a second time to visit the humble cemetery of the village near Haerlem, they found a little old man writing rapidly, with a piece of charcoal, a few strange words on the stone under which the body of their father, the Minister, had been laid.  When they came close to the spot, the old man ceased, and pointed out to them, with an awful look, that which he had written.  After the inscription, “John Durer, formerly Minister to his Majesty the Emperor of Germany,” the old man had written—­

“Heaven requites ingratitude.”

THE STORY OF A WEDGE.

By Rev.  C. H. Mead.

For more than a hundred miles, I had traveled, having the entire seat to myself.

Aside from the selfishness of the average traveler, who, while unwilling to pay for more sitting, is more than willing to monopolize the whole seat, I was glad of plenty of elbow room to enable me to answer some pressing letters.