n that of a dog who has been
running, so quick that it could not be counted, so faint that it could
scarcely be heard.

He kept repeating: "I don't want to die. Oh! God--God--God; what is to
become of me? I shall no longer see anything--anything any more. Oh!
God."

He saw before him some hideous thing invisible to the others, and his
staring eyes reflected the terror it inspired. His two hands continued
their horrible and wearisome action. All at once he started with a sharp
shudder that could be seen to thrill the whole of his body, and jerked
out the words, "The graveyard--I--Oh! God."

He said no more, but lay motionless, haggard and panting.

Time sped on, noon struck by the clock of a neighboring convent. Duroy
left the room to eat a mouthful or two. He came back an hour later.
Madame Forestier refused to take anything. The invalid had not stirred.
He still continued to draw his thin fingers along the sheet as though to
pull it up over his face.

His wife was seated in an armchair at the foot of the bed. Duroy took
another beside her, and they waited in silence. A nurse had come, sent
in by the doctor, and was dozing near the window.

Duroy himself was beginning to doze off when he felt that something was
happening. He opened his eyes just in time to see Forestier close his,
like two lights dying out. A faint rattle stirred in the throat of the
dying man, and two streaks of blood appeared at the corners of his
mouth, and then flowed down into his shirt. His hands ceased their
hideous motion. He had ceased to breathe.

His wife understood this, and uttering a kind of shriek, she fell on her
knees sobbing, with her face buried in the bed-clothes. George,
surprised and scared, mechanically made the sign of the cross. The nurse
awakened, drew near the bed. "It is all over," said she.

Duroy, who was recovering his self-possession, murmured, with a sigh of
relief: "It was sooner over than I thought for."

When the first shock was over and the first tears shed, they had to busy
themselves with all the cares and all the necessary steps a dead man
exacts. Duroy was running about till nightfall. He was very hungry when
he got back. Madame Forestier ate a little, and then they both installed
themselves in the chamber of death to watch the body. Two candles burned
on the night-table beside a plate filled with holy water, in which lay a
sprig of mimosa, for they had not been able to get the necessary twig of
consec