Part 45 (2/2)

”If this novel does not bring me the fame you antic.i.p.ate I shall not much care; I have lost some of my ambitions. If it fails to add to my fortune, never mind; a single man has no great need of wealth.

”I go to-night on board a steamer which sails for Europe at daybreak. When you read this I shall be on the sea. I have secured a position as resident correspondent abroad for one of the great newspapers. Perhaps I never shall return.

Truly your friend, S. R.”

”_The idiot!_” cried the reader, as he finished perusing this letter.

”_The imbecile!_ Was there ever such a fool born on this earth!”

Then he apostrophised the heap of ashes that lay in the box before him.

”There never was and never will be so great a work of fiction as you were yesterday! And yet a little touch of flame, and all was extinguished! How like you were to man! Let him have the brain of a Shakespeare, and a pound weight falling on his skull ends everything.

”There was a flood in Hungary last week, in which a thousand people were drowned. There was an earthquake in Peru where five hundred perished. A vessel went down off the Caroline Islands. Taken all together, they did not equal to this world your loss.

”The poet knew what he was saying: 'Great wits are sure to madness near allied.' Oh, to think that a mind that could execute your thrilling pages knew no more than to destroy them!

”I will not cast you, sublime ashes, to the winds of heaven! I will keep you reverently, as one preserves the cloak of a great man, or the bones of a mastodon. Behold, I close you again in your covers, where the eye of no mortal shall henceforth behold you.”

With the words the disappointed critic performed the action. And to this day visitors to his room read with wonder the inscription he has placed on the box:

”_The greatest novel that ever was written._”

THE END.

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