ght before, and the mild sun was still veiled by clouds. From the
plane trees came the morning carols of the birds, while far away in the
sleeping country a locomotive whistled with a prolonged moan. And he
was alone; alone in the great melancholy house, whose emptiness he felt
around him, whose silence he heard. The light slowly increased, and
he watched the patches it made on the window-panes broadening and
brightening. Then the candle paled in the growing light, and the whole
room became visible. And with the dawn, as he had anticipated, came
relief. The sight of the familiar objects around him brought him
consolation.

But Pascal, although the attack had passed away, still suffered
horribly. A sharp pain remained in the hollow of his chest, and his left
arm, benumbed, hung from his shoulder like lead. In his long waiting
for the help that Martine had gone to bring, he had reflected on
the suffering which made the flesh cry out. And he found that he was
resigned; he no longer felt the rebelliousness which the mere sight of
physical pain had formerly awakened in him. It had exasperated him, as
if it had been a monstrous and useless cruelty of nature. In his doubts
as a physician, he had attended his patients only to combat it, and to
relieve it. If he ended by accepting it, now that he himself suffered
its horrible torture, was it that he had risen one degree higher in his
faith of life, to that serene height whence life appeared altogether
good, even with the fatal condition of suffering attached to it;
suffering which is perhaps its spring? Yes, to live all of life, to live
it and to suffer it all without rebellion, without believing that it is
made better by being made painless, this presented itself clearly to
his dying eyes, as the greatest courage and the greatest wisdom. And to
cheat pain while he waited, he reviewed his latest theories; he dreamed
of a means of utilizing suffering by transforming it into action, into
work. If it be true that man feels pain more acutely according as he
rises in the scale of civilization, it is also certain that he becomes
stronger through it, better armed against it, more capable of resisting
it. The organ, the brain which works, develops and grows stronger,
provided the equilibrium between the sensations which it receives and
the work which it gives back be not broken. Might not one hope, then,
for a humanity in which the amount of work accomplished would so exactly
equal the