e no fear, I have listened to you, I will endeavor to be worthy
of the heritage you leave; and I think, with you, that perhaps the great
future lies entirely there."

In the sad and quiet room Pascal began to speak again, with the
courageous tranquillity of a dying philosopher giving his last lesson.
He now reviewed his personal observations; he said that he had often
cured himself by work, regular and methodical work, not carried to
excess. Eleven o'clock struck; he urged Ramond to take his breakfast,
and he continued the conversation, soaring to lofty and distant heights,
while Martine served the meal. The sun had at last burst through the
morning mists, a sun still half-veiled in clouds, and mild, whose golden
light warmed the room. Presently, after taking a few sips of milk,
Pascal remained silent.

At this moment the young physician was eating a pear.

"Are you in pain again?" he asked.

"No, no; finish."

But he could not deceive Ramond. It was an attack, and a terrible one.
The suffocation came with the swiftness of a thunderbolt, and he fell
back on the pillow, his face already blue. He clutched at the bedclothes
to support himself, to raise the dreadful weight which oppressed his
chest. Terrified, livid, he kept his wide open eyes fixed upon the
clock, with a dreadful expression of despair and grief; and for ten
minutes it seemed as if every moment must be his last.

Ramond had immediately given him a hypodermic injection. The relief was
slow to come, the efficacy less than before.

When Pascal revived, large tears stood in his eyes. He did not speak
now, he wept. Presently, looking at the clock with his darkening vision,
he said:

"My friend, I shall die at four o'clock; I shall not see her."

And as his young colleague, in order to divert his thoughts, declared,
in spite of appearances, that the end was not so near, Pascal, again
becoming enthusiastic, wished to give him a last lesson, based on direct
observation. He had, as it happened, attended several cases similar to
his own, and he remembered especially to have dissected at the hospital
the heart of a poor old man affected with sclerosis.

"I can see it--my heart. It is the color of a dead leaf; its fibers are
brittle, wasted, one would say, although it has augmented slightly in
volume. The inflammatory process has hardened it; it would be difficult
to cut--"

He continued in a lower voice. A little before, he had felt his heart
growing wea