“Last year I was greatly surprised when my servant brought me the card of Alexandre Le Mansel, and said that the gentleman was waiting for me in the ante-room.
“I was in my study consulting with a colleague on a matter of some importance. However, I begged him to excuse me for a moment while I hurried to greet my old friend. I found he had grown very old, bald, haggard, and terribly emaciated. I took him by the arm and led him into the salon.
“‘I am glad to see you again,’ he said, ‘and I have much to tell you. I am exposed to the most unheard-of persecutions. But I have courage, and I shall struggle bravely, and I shall triumph over my enemies.’
“These words disquieted me, as they would have disquieted in my place any other nerve specialist. I recognised a symptom of the disease which, by the fatal laws of heredity, menaced my friend, and which had appeared to be checked.
“‘My dear friend,’ I said, ‘we will talk about that presently. Wait here a moment. I just want to finish something. In the meantime take a book and amuse yourself.’
“You know I have a great number of books, and my drawing-room contains about six thousand volumes in three mahogany book-cases. Why, then, should my unfortunate friend choose the very one likely to do him harm, and open it at that fatal page? I conferred some twenty minutes longer with my colleague, and having taken leave of him I returned to the room where I had left Le Mansel. I found the unfortunate man in the most fearful condition. He struck a book that lay open before him and, which I at once recognised as a translation of the Historia Augusta. He recited at the top of his voice this sentence of Lampridius:
“‘On the day of the birth of Alexander Severus, a chicken, belonging to the father of the newly-born, laid a red egg—augury of the imperial purple to which the child was destined.’
“His excitement increased to fury. He foamed at the mouth. He cried: ‘The egg, the egg of the day of my birth. I am an Emperor. I know that you want to kill me. Keep away, you wretch!’ He strode down the room, then, returning, came towards me with open arms. ‘My friend,’ he said, ‘my old comrade, what do you wish me to bestow on you? An Emperor—an Emperor.... My father was right.... the red egg. I must be an Emperor! Scoundrel, why did you hide this book from me? This is a crime of high treason; it shall be punished! ‘I shall be Emperor! Emperor! Yes, it is my duty.... Forward.... forward!”
“He was gone. In vain I tried to detain him. He escaped me. You know the rest. All the newspapers have described how, after leaving me, he bought a revolver and blew out the brains of the sentry who tried to prevent his forcing his way into the Elysée.
“And thus it happens that a sentence written by a Latin historian of the fourth century was the cause, fifteen hundred years after, of the death in our country of a wretched private soldier. Who will ever disentangle the web of cause and effect?