ew more and more attached to me, till at length, had
I been his son, he could not have treated me with a greater affection,
while for my part I did what lay in my power to lessen his sufferings,
for he would let no other physician near him.

At length when he had grown very feeble he expressed a desire to see a
notary. The man he named was sent for and remained closeted with him for
an hour or more, when he left for a while to return with several of
his clerks, who accompanied him to my master's room, from which I was
excluded. Presently they all went away, bearing some parchments with
them.

That evening Fonseca sent for me. I found him very weak, but cheerful
and full of talk.

'Come here, nephew,' he said, 'I have had a busy day. I have been busy
all my life through, and it would not be well to grow idle at the last.
Do you know what I have been doing this day?'

I shook my head.

'I will tell you. I have been making my will--there is something to
leave; not so very much, but still something.'

'Do not talk of wills,' I said; 'I trust that you may live for many
years.'

He laughed. 'You must think badly of my case, nephew, when you think
that I can be deceived thus. I am about to die as you know well, and I
do not fear death. My life has been prosperous but not happy, for it was
blighted in its spring--no matter how. The story is an old one and not
worth telling; moreover, whichever way it had read, it had all been one
now in the hour of death. We must travel our journey each of us; what
does it matter if the road has been good or bad when we have reached the
goal? For my part religion neither comforts nor frightens me now at the
last. I will stand or fall upon the record of my life. I have done evil
in it and I have done good; the evil I have done because nature and
temptation have been too strong for me at times, the good also because
my heart prompted me to it. Well, it is finished, and after all death
cannot be so terrible, seeing that every human being is born to undergo
it, together with all living things. Whatever else is false, I hold this
to be true, that God exists and is more merciful than those who preach
Him would have us to believe.' And he ceased exhausted.

Often since then I have thought of his words, and I still think of them
now that my own hour is so near. As will be seen Fonseca was a fatalist,
a belief which I do not altogether share, holding as I do that within
certain limits we are a