Such as he was to-day the Medicis had been, and many another whom the world held noble.

He had but to live and to dare; only to live and to dare! Only in order to do the one he must--it was no choice of his--do the other! Before he was five minutes older he was reminded of the necessity.

At the door of his house the pains of the disease from which he suffered--aggravated, perhaps, by the excitement through which he had just passed, or by the cold of the weather--seized him with unusual violence.

He leant, pale and almost fainting, against the door-jamb, unable at the moment to do so much as raise the latch.

The golden dreams in which he had lost himself by the way, the visions of power and fame, vanished as he had so many times seen the after-glow vanish from the snow-peaks; leaving only cold images of death and desolation.