"No, I am Mathilde Loisel."

Her friend uttered a cry.

Oh! my poor Mathilde, how changed you are "

Yes, I have had days hard enough since I saw you, days wretched enough—and all because of you "

"Me? How so?"

"You remember that necklace of diamonds that you lent me to wear to the ministerial ball?"

"Yes. Well?"

"Well, I lost it."

"How can that be? You returned it to me."

I returned to you another exactly like it. These ten years we've been paying for it. You know it was not easy for us, who had nothing. At last it is over, and I am very glad." Madame Forestier was stunned.

९९ You say that you bought a diamond necklace to replace mine?"

"Yes; you did not notice it, then? They were just alike." And she smiled with a proud and naive pleasure.

Madame Forestier, deeply moved, took both her hands.

"Oh, my poor Mathilde! Why, my necklace was paste. It was worth five hundred francs at most."

XI. THE MAN WHO WOULD BE

KING1 (1888)

By Rudyard Kipling (1865- >

९९

[Setting. "They call it Kafiristan," said Dravot, the unfortunate hero of the story. By my reckoning it's the top righthand corner of Afghanistan, not more than three hundred miles from Peshawar." Determined to be Kings of Kafiristan, Carnehan and Dravot started probably from the capital of the Punjab, Lahore, where the newspaper office seems to have been. Ten miles west of Peshawar they entered the famous Khaiber (or Khyber) Pass, a region which Kipling describes more at length in "The Man Who Was," "The Drums of the Fore and Aft,' ," "The Lost Legion," "Love o' Women,' " " Wee Willie Winkie," and "With the Main Guard." No country in Asia is less known to civilization than Kafiristan. The Mohammedan traders say that it is the most attractive part of Afghanistan. The name means country of unbelievers," the Kafirs having resisted all attempts to convert them to the Mohamme dan faith. They are pure Aryans, being thus brothers to the Greeks, Romans, Germans, English, and ourselves. They are noted for their beauty and strength. India or rather AngloIndia has been almost rediscovered by Kipling, but this is his only story of Kafiristan. It too, as Carnehan and Dravot learn to their sorrow, is a land of impenetrable mystery.

९९

Plot. The real plot does not begin to unfold itself until Carnehan, wrecked in body and mind, returns to the newspaper office and tries to report his experiences. Thus nearly one half of the story may be called introductory or preliminary. 1 From "The Phantom 'Rickshaw."

This is unusual with Kipling and with all other modern story writers. The introduction justifies itself, however, in this case because, since a half-crazed man with weakening memory is to tell the real tale, his narrative would have to be supplemented by explanations on nearly every page unless the introductory part could be taken for granted. Notice how often in reading Carnehan's broken story you supply what he omits and interpret what he only fragmentarily says by reference to what has gone before.

Kipling has done more in this story than to present a character of limitless audacity. He has impressed again one of his favorite teachings. There is, he holds, a barrier between East and West that can never be crossed. The West can go so far with the East but no farther. Brave men of the West may conquer the East and rule it, but to take liberties with it is to uncover a vast realm of the unknown and to invite disaster. In "The Return of Imray," a good-natured Englishman pats the head of Bahadur Khan's child and is killed for it. Another Englishman, in " Beyond the Pale," thought that he understood the heart of India, and here is his epitaph: "He took too deep an interest in native life, but he will never do so again." Dravot could play king and even god in Kafiristan, but when he exposed himself ignorantly to an old racial superstition he met instant and inevitable destruction.

Characters. Carnehan tells the story, but Dravot is the energizing character. Captain James Cook, the discoverer of the Sandwich Islands, is plainly the original of Dravot. Read the thirtieth chapter of the second volume of Mark Twain's "Roughing It" (1872) and you will find Kipling's story clearly outlined. One cannot withhold a measure of admiration for this type of uncontrolled audacity. Dravot was not bad at heart, he was only boundless, a type of the adventurer that has given many a fascinating chapter to history as well as to literature. In "The Research Magnificent," by Mr. H. G. Wells, the hero, Benham, says: "I think what I want is to be king of the

world. . . . It is the very core of me.

...

I mean to be a king

in this earth. King. I'm not mad." His motive, however, is very different from Dravot's. "I see the world," he continues,

...

staggering from misery to misery, and there is little wisdom, less rule, folly, prejudice, limitation . . . and it is my world and I am responsible. . . . As soon as your kingship is plain to you, there is no more rest, no peace, no delight, except in work, in service, in utmost effort." The three weaknesses to be overcome are Fear, Indulgence, and Jealousy. Both Dravot and Benham fail and the comment of each on his own failure is an autobiography. Benham: "I can feel that greater world I shall never see as one feels the dawn coming through the last darkness." Dravot: "We've had a dashed fine run for our money. What's coming next?"]

Brother to a Prince and fellow to a beggar if he be found worthy.

The Law, as quoted, lays down a fair conduct of life, and one not easy to follow. I have been fellow to a beggar again and again under circumstances which prevented either of us finding out whether the other was worthy. I have still to be brother to a Prince, though I once came near to kinship with what might have been a veritable King and was promised the reversion of a Kingdom — army, law-courts, revenue and policy all complete. But, to-day, I greatly fear that my King is dead, and if I want a crown I must go hunt it for myself.

The beginning of everything was in a railway train upon the road to Mhow from Ajmir. There had been a Deficit in the Budget, which necessitated travelling, not Second-class, which is only half as dear as First-class, but by Intermediate, which is very awful indeed. There are no cushions in the Intermediate class, and the population are either Intermediate, which is Eurasian, or native, which for a long night journey is nasty, or

Loafer, which is amusing though intoxicated. Intermediates do not buy from refreshment-rooms. They carry their food in bundles and pots, and buy sweets from the native sweetmeatsellers, and drink the roadside water. That is why in hot weather Intermediates are taken out of the carriages dead, and in all weathers are most properly looked down upon.

My particular Intermediate happened to be empty till I reached Nasirabad, when a big black-browed gentleman in shirt-sleeves entered, and, following the custom of Intermediates, passed the time of day. He was a wanderer and a vagabond like myself, but with an educated taste for whiskey. He told tales of things he had seen and done, of out-of-the-way corners of the Empire into which he had penetrated, and of adventures in which he risked his life for a few days' food.

"If India was filled with men like you and me, not knowing more than the crows where they'd get their next day's rations, it is n't seventy millions of revenue the land would be paying it's seven hundred millions," said he; and as I looked at his mouth and chin I was disposed to agree with him.

We talked politics — the politics of Loaferdom that sees things from the underside where the lath and plaster is not smoothed off and we talked postal arrangements because my friend wanted to send a telegram back from the next station to Ajmir, the turning-off place from the Bombay to the Mhow line as you travel westward. My friend had no money beyond eight annas which he wanted for dinner, and I had no money at all, owing to the hitch in the Budget before mentioned. Further, I was going into a wilderness where, though I should resume touch with the Treasury, there were no telegraph offices. I was, therefore, unable to help him in any way.

"We might threaten a Station-master, and make him send a wire on tick," said my friend, "but that'd mean enquiries