One night, long after midnight had passed, the white-haired man, his
father, said to him, “My beloved Achilles, hast thou the strength to
contemplate a woeful calamity?”
The sound of the aged voice, as sorrowful as the autumn winds among the
chimney-pots, caused the young man to lift his sunken eyes from the
page upon which they lay.
“Is it, O my father,” he said, “that we are threatened with the most
dire of all catastrophes?”
“Yes, my beloved,” said his father. “Indeed, the most dire of all
catastrophes is consummated already. This is the morning of Monday.
If--how shall I reveal it to thee, Achilles” (the anguish in the eyes
of the old man was insupportable)--“if by Friday at noon we cannot
obtain twenty pieces of gold for the price of our roof, we shall be
driven forth of our little room, thou and I, beloved one, into the
gross darkness of the streets of the great city.”
At first the young man’s mind was like a blank page, but all too soon
it became susceptible to the words his father had uttered. “O my
father!” he cried, “I have known these many days that Fate was devising
some cruel and bloody trial for this craven’s heart.” And then, as a
passionate horror swelled his veins, he cried, “This is the untold evil
which all my life has lain upon my heart. I have such a bitter horror
of the streets of the great city, my father, that I would prefer to
embrace death.”
The face of the old man was like that of a corpse.
“Do I not know it, my beloved?” he said. “Was it not these loins that
imbued this horror in thy tender veins? Yet Fate has spoken; only one
thing remains unto us.”
“What is this thing, my father?”
“We can but pray for a miracle to happen.”
“Ah, my father,” said the young man in a hoarse, croaking whisper,
“miracles do not happen.”
“The modern authors have declared it thus in their books,” said the
white-haired man, his father, “but in the Book of the Ages is it not
recorded otherwise?”
“Reveal to me the written words, my father, I beseech thee,” said the
young man, with the eagerness of one who thirsts.
The aged man, his father, lifted the mighty tome from the shelf, and,
opening it at a page that contained no writing, placed his finger
thereupon.
“See, beloved one,” said the aged man, with a meek triumph in his faint
eyes, “it is there written.”
The young man turned to the passage with the frenzy of one devoured by
pangs.
“Why, my father,” he cried out, “there is nothing there. The page is
empty. It is all dark to my gaze.”
“Nay, beloved one,” said his father. “It is written there in sober
verity. I have conned the page a thousand times. Look again, beloved
one, I beseech thee.”
Again the young man traversed the page with his gaunt eyes.
“Oh, gentle Zeus,” he cried in a terror that was piteous to behold,
“the page is blank; it contains no writing. I am to be cast into the
streets of the great city.”
The wretched young man sank to his knees in the little room, biting at
his nails.