"Tout à vous,
"Pomerantseff."
Whether or no Gérard was sufficiently recovered to meet his friend at the Austrian embassy on the evening named, we do not know, nor does it concern us; but he is certainly enjoying excellent health now, and is no less charming than before his extraordinary adventure.
Such is the true story of a meeting with the devil in Paris not many years ago; a story true in every particular, as can be easily proved by a direct application to any of the persons concerned in it, for they are all living still. The key to the enigma we cannot find, for we certainly do not put faith in any of the theories of spiritualists; but that an apparition such as we have described did appear in the way and under the circumstances we have described, is a fact, and we must leave the satisfactory solution of the difficulty to more profound psychologists than ourselves.
ON READING SHAKESPEARE.
CONCLUSION.
Probably no play of Shakespeare's, probably no other play or poem of a high degree of merit, is so much neglected as "Troilus and Cressida" is. I have met intelligent readers of Shakespeare, who thought themselves unusually well acquainted with his writings, and who were so, who understood him and delighted in him, but who yet had never read "Troilus and Cressida." They had, in one way and another, got the notion that it is a very inferior play, and not worth reading, or at least not to be read until after they were tired of all the others—a time which had not yet come. There seems to be a slur cast upon this play; the reason of which is its very undramatic character, and the consequent non-appearance of its name in theatrical records. No one has heard of any actor's or actress's appearance, even in the last century, as one of the personages in "Troilus and Cressida." Its name has not been upon the playbills for generations, although even "Love's Labor's Lost" has once in a while been performed. Hence it is almost unknown, except to the thorough Shakespearian readers, who are very few; fewer now, in proportion to the largely increased leisurely and instructed classes, than they were two hundred years ago, much to the shame of our vaunted popular education and diffusion of knowledge. And yet this neglected drama is one of its author's great works; in one respect his greatest. "Troilus and Cressida" is Shakespeare's wisest play in the way of worldly wisdom. It is filled choke-full of sententious, and in most cases slightly satirical revelations of human nature, uttered with a felicity of phrase and an impressiveness of metaphor that make each one seem like a beam of light shot into the recesses of man's heart. Such are these:
In the reproof of chance
Lies the true proof of men.
The wound of peace is surety;
Surety secure; but modest doubt is called
The beacon of the wise.