s not up to it. It is time that you came back."

The invalid muttered: "I--I shall do all my work six feet under the sod
now."

This fixed idea recurred like a knell _apropos_ of everything,
continually cropping up in every idea, every sentence. There was a long
silence, a deep and painful silence. The glow of the sunset was slowly
fading, and the mountains were growing black against the red sky, which
was getting duller. A colored shadow, a commencement of night, which yet
retained the glow of an expiring furnace, stole into the room and seemed
to tinge the furniture, the walls, the hangings, with mingled tints of
sable and crimson. The chimney-glass, reflecting the horizon, seemed
like a patch of blood. Madame Forestier did not stir, but remained
standing with her back to the room, her face to the window pane.

Forestier began to speak in a broken, breathless voice, heartrending to
listen to. "How many more sunsets shall I see? Eight, ten, fifteen, or
twenty, perhaps thirty--no more. You have time before you; for me it is
all over. And it will go on all the same, after I am gone, as if I was
still here." He was silent for a few moments, and then continued: "All
that I see reminds me that in a few days I shall see it no more. It is
horrible. I shall see nothing--nothing of all that exists; not the
smallest things one makes use of--the plates, the glasses, the beds in
which one rests so comfortably, the carriages. How nice it is to drive
out of an evening! How fond I was of all those things!"

He nervously moved the fingers of both hands, as though playing the
piano on the arms of his chair. Each of his silences was more painful
than his words, so evident was it that his thoughts must be fearful.
Duroy suddenly recalled what Norbert de Varenne had said to him some
weeks before, "I now see death so near that I often want to stretch out
my arms to put it back. I see it everywhere. The insects crushed on the
path, the falling leaves, the white hair in a friend's beard, rend my
heart and cry to me, 'Behold!'"

He had not understood all this on that occasion; now, seeing Forestier,
he did. An unknown pain assailed him, as if he himself was sensible of
the presence of death, hideous death, hard by, within reach of his hand,
on the chair in which his friend lay gasping. He longed to get up, to go
away, to fly, to return to Paris at once. Oh! if he had known he would
not have come.

Darkness had now spread over the room,