king his face calm, his soul
compelling him to silence, but his eyes seemed to mourn.

He repeated in a lower voice, as if to himself, "You! You!"

He fell asleep with "You" on his lips.

. . . . .

He died that night. I saw him die. By a strange chance he was alone
at the last moment.

There was no death rattle, no death agony, properly speaking. He did
not claw the bedclothes with his fingers, nor speak, nor cry. No last
sigh, no last flash.

He had asked Anna for a drink. As there was no more water in the room
and the nurse happened to be away at that moment, she had gone out to
get some quickly. She did not even shut the door.

The lamplight filled the room. I watched the man's face and felt, by
some sign, that the great silence at that moment was drowning him.

Then instinctively I cried out to him. I could not help crying out so
that he should not be alone.

"I see you!"

My strange voice, disused from speaking, penetrated into the room.

But he died at the very instant that I gave him my madman's alms. His
head dropped back stiffly, his eyeballs rolled. Anna came in again.
She must have caught the sound of my outcry vaguely, for she hesitated.

She saw him. A fearful cry burst from her with all the force of her
healthy body, a true widow's cry. She dropped on her knees at the
bedside.

The nurse came in right after her and raised her arms. Silence
reigned, that flashing up of incredible misery into which you sink
completely in the presence of the dead, no matter who you are or where
you are. The woman on her knees and the woman standing up watched the
man who was stretched there, inert as if he had never lived. They were
both almost dead.

Then Anna wept like a child. She rose. The nurse went to tell the
others. Instinctively, Anna, who was wearing a light waist, picked up
a black shawl that the nurse had left on a chair and put it around her.

. . . . .

The room, so recently desolate, now filled with life.

They lit candles everywhere, and the stars, visible through the window,
disappeared.

They knelt down, and cried and prayed to him. The dead man held
command. "He" was always on their lips. Servants were there whom I
had not yet seen but whom he knew well. These people around him all
seemed to be lying, as though it was they who were suffering, they who
were dying, and he were alive.

"He must have suffered a great deal when he died," said the doctor, in
a low