II

A little more than a year afterwards, February 1898, came the burning of the storage, which I have already described, and the effect of which was so permanently disastrous in crippling effort. Eight months after that came the greatest calamity of his life.

The disasters of these three years, 1896–7–8, seemed cumulative and consistent. The first struck his activity; the second crippled his resources; the third destroyed his health.