“Silence,” said John Bradshaw. “Charles, be a man, and pay for your own execution.”
Charles offered his note-of-hand and his royal word.
He nothing common did or mean
Upon that memorable scene.
But the waiter refused them. And the five were compelled to leave the restaurant. There was a crowd round the door. When they had got clear of the crowd, one of their number was missing. It was Charles Marius.
The rest of the story is well known. Charles Marius escaped to St. Helena, and spent the rest of his life in collaborating with Dr. Gauden on a novel called “Eikon Basilike.” The failure of the execution preyed upon John Bradshaw’s mind, and in a fit of madness he wrote the time-tables which bear his name. Menenius Agrippa became a diner-out, and acquired the surname of “History,” because he always repeated himself. The Ambassador still lives in his castle in Spain.
Clio had finished. “Thank you so much,” said the other Muses.
II.
EUTERPE’S STORY: THE GIRL AND THE MINSTREL.
THERE was silence for a few moments. Erato, stretched lazily on the floor, looking up at the dim-lit roof of the cloud-chamber, let her pretty lips curve half-way to a smile, when she checked herself suddenly; she never could keep her thoughts still for a moment,—they flew from poor Clio’s story to a story of her own. She was thinking now of a hot summer night in Sicily, and of one who walked across the low hills, with flocks pattering softly after him, and seen but indistinctly in those fragrant moments when the evening touches the darkness. She thought of him. As he went, he piped a melody—a simple strain enough, but with one of those quaint refrains that nestle down in the memory of a man. Ah—and afterwards!