ater I was among the houses
of Casi. To find the priest in his little cottage by the church was an
easy matter; to tell him my errand and to induce him to come with me, to
tend the holy man who lay dying alone in the mountain, was as easy. To
return, however, was the most difficult part of the undertaking; for the
upward path was steep, and the priest was old and needed such assistance
as my own very weary limbs could scarcely render him. We had the
advantage of a lanthorn which he insisted upon bringing, and we made as
good progress as could be expected. But it was best part of two hours
after my setting out before we stood once more upon the little platform
where the hermit had his hut.

We found the place in utter darkness. Through lack of oil his little
lamp had burned itself out; and when we entered, the man on the bed of
wattles lay singing a lewd tavern-song, which, coming from such holy
lips, filled me with horror and amazement.

But the old priest, with that vast and doleful experience of death-beds
which belongs to men of his class, was quick to perceive the cause of
this. The fever was flickering up before life's final extinction, and
the poor moribund was delirious and knew not what he said.

For an hour we watched beside him, waiting. The priest was confident
that there would be a return of consciousness and a spell of lucidity
before the end.

Through that lugubrious hour I squatted there, watching the awful
process of human dissolution for the first time.

Save in the case of Fifanti I had never yet seen death; nor could it be
said that I had really seen it then. With the pedant, death had been a
sudden sharp severing of the thread of life, and I had been conscious
that he was dead without any appreciation of death itself, blinded in
part by my own exalted condition at the time.

But in this death of Fra Sebastiano I was heated by no participation.
I was an unwilling and detached spectator, brought there by force of
circumstance; and my mind received from the spectacle an impression not
easily to be effaced, an impression which may have been answerable in
part for that which followed.

Towards dawn at last the sick man's babblings--and they were mostly as
profane and lewd as his occasional bursts of song--were quieted. The
unseeing glitter of his eyes that had ever and anon been turned upon us
was changed to a dull and heavy consciousness, and he struggled to rise,
but his limbs refused their offi