Repeat
the Comfiteor, my son. You have perhaps forgotten it; I will help you.
Repeat after me: 'Comfiteor Deo omnipotenti--Beata Maria semper
virgini.'"

He paused from time to time to allow the dying man to catch him up. Then
he said, "And now confess."

The young wife and Duroy sat still seized on by a strange uneasiness,
stirred by anxious expectation. The invalid had murmured something. The
priest repeated, "You have given way to guilty pleasures--of what kind,
my son?"

Madeleine rose and said, "Let us go down into the garden for a short
time. We must not listen to his secrets."

And they went and sat down on a bench before the door beneath a rose
tree in bloom, and beside a bed of pinks, which shed their soft and
powerful perfume abroad in the pure air. Duroy, after a few moments'
silence, inquired, "Shall you be long before you return to Paris?"

"Oh, no," she replied. "As soon as it is all over I shall go back
there."

"Within ten days?"

"Yes, at the most."

"He has no relations, then?"

"None except cousins. His father and mother died when he was quite
young."

They both watched a butterfly sipping existence from the pinks, passing
from one to another with a soft flutter of his wings, which continued to
flap slowly when he alighted on a flower. They remained silent for a
considerable time.

The servant came to inform them that "the priest had finished," and they
went upstairs together.

Forestier seemed to have grown still thinner since the day before. The
priest held out his hand to him, saying, "Good-day, my son, I shall call
in again to-morrow morning," and took his departure.

As soon as he had left the room the dying man, who was panting for
breath, strove to hold out his two hands to his wife, and gasped, "Save
me--save me, darling, I don't want to die--I don't want to die. Oh! save
me--tell me what I had better do; send for the doctor. I will take
whatever you like. I won't die--I won't die."

He wept. Big tears streamed from his eyes down his fleshless cheeks, and
the corners of his mouth contracted like those of a vexed child. Then
his hands, falling back on the bed clothes, began a slow, regular, and
continuous movement, as though trying to pick something off the sheet.

His wife, who began to cry too, said: "No, no, it is nothing. It is only
a passing attack, you will be better to-morrow, you tired yourself too
much going out yesterday."

Forestier's breathing was shorter tha