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Fiderson passed his hand through his hair.

“That death scene!” he exclaimed at me, giving Martin up as a log accidentally rolled in from the woods. “I thought that after ‘Wagram’ I could feel nothing more; emotion was exhausted; but then came that magnificent death! It was tragedy made ecstatic; pathos made into music; the grandeur of a gentle spirit, conquered physically but morally unconquerable! Goethe’s ‘More Light’ outshone!”

Old Tom’s eyes followed the smoke of his perplexing cigar along its heavy strata in the still air of the room, as he inquired if I remembered Orlando T. Bickner’s boy, Mel. I had never heard of him, and said so.

“No, I expect not,” rejoined Martin. “Prob’ly you wouldn’t; Bickner was Governor along in my early days, and I reckon he ain’t hardly more than jest a name to you two. But we kind of thought he was the biggest man this country had ever seen, or was goin’ to see, and he was a big man. He made one president, and could have been it himself, instead, if he’d be’n willing to do a kind of underhand trick, but I expect without it he was about as big a man as anybody’d care to be; Governor, Senator, Secretary of State–and just owned his party! And, my law!–the whole earth bowin’ down to him; torchlight processions and sky-rockets when he come home in the night; bands and cannon if his train got in, daytime; home-folks so proud of him they couldn’t see; everybody’s hat off; and all the most important men in the country following at his heels–a country, too, that’d put up consider’ble of a comparison with everything Napoleon had when he’d licked ’em all, over there.

“Of course he had enemies, and, of course, year by year, they got to be more of ’em, and they finally downed him for good; and like other public men so fixed, he didn’t live long after that. He had a son, Melville, mighty likable young fellow, studyin’ law when his paw died. I was livin’ in their town then, and I knowed Mel Bickner pretty well; he was consider’ble of a man.

“I don’t know as I ever heard him speak of that’s bein’ the reason, but I expect it may’ve be’n partly in the hope of carryin’ out some of his paw’s notions, Mel tried hard to git into politics; but the old man’s local enemies jumped on every move he made, and his friends wouldn’t help any; you can’t tell why, except that it generally is thataway. Folks always like to laugh at a great man’s son and say he can’t amount to anything. Of course that comes partly from fellows like that ornery little cuss we saw to-night, thinkin’ they’re a good deal because somebody else done something, and the somebody else happened to be their paw; and the women run after ’em, and they git low-down like he was, and so on.”

“Mr. Martin,” interrupted Fiderson, with indignation, “will you kindly inform me in what way ‘L’Aiglon’ was ‘low-down’?”

“Well, sir, didn’t that huntin’-lodge appointment kind of put you in mind of a camp-meetin’ scandal?” returned old Tom quietly. “It did me.”

“But–“

“Well, sir, I can’t say as I understood the French of it, but I read the book in English before I come up, and it seemed to me he was pretty much of a low-down boy; yet I wanted to see how they’d make him out; hearin’ it was, thought, the country over, to be such a great play; though to tell the truth all I could tell about that was that every line seemed to end in ‘awze’; and ‘t they all talked in rhyme, and it did strike me as kind of enervatin’ to be expected to believe that people could keep it up that long; and that it wasn’t only the boy that never quit on the subject of himself and his folks, but pretty near any of ’em, if he’d git the chanst, did the same thing, so’t almost I sort of wondered if Rostand wasn’t that kind.”