e cloak around his shoulders; "I require your
assistance as surgeon, not for one alive, but dead."

"What do you mean?" I exclaimed, full of surprise. "I arrived with my
sister from abroad," he said, and beckoned me at the same time to follow
him. "I lived here with her at the house of a friend. My sister died
yesterday suddenly of a disease, and my relatives wish to bury her
to-morrow. According to an old custom of our family all are to be buried
in the tomb of our ancestors; many, notwithstanding, who died in foreign
countries are buried there and embalmed. I do not grudge my relatives
her body, but for my father I want at least the head of his daughter, in
order that he may see her once more." This custom of severing the heads
of beloved relatives appeared to me somewhat awful, yet I did not dare
to object to it lest I should offend the stranger. I told him that I was
acquainted with the embalming of the dead, and begged him to conduct me
to the deceased. Yet I could not help asking him why all this must be
done so mysteriously and at night? He answered me that his relatives,
who considered his intention horrible, objected to it by daylight;
if only the head were severed, then they could say no more about it;
although he might have brought me the head, yet a natural feeling had
prevented him from severing it himself.

In the meantime we had reached a large, splendid house. My companion
pointed it out to me as the end of our nocturnal walk. We passed the
principal entrance of the house, entered a little door, which the
stranger carefully locked behind him, and now ascended in the dark a
narrow spiral staircase. It led towards a dimly lighted passage, out of
which we entered a room lighted by a lamp fastened to the ceiling.

In this room was a bed, on which the corpse lay. The stranger turned
aside his face, evidently endeavoring to hide his tears. He pointed
towards the bed, telling me to do my business well and quickly, and left
the room.

I took my instruments, which I as surgeon always carried about with me,
and approached the bed. Only the head of the corpse was visible, and it
was so beautiful that I experienced involuntarily the deepest sympathy.
Dark hair hung down in long plaits, the features were pale, the eyes
closed. At first I made an incision into the skin, after the manner of
surgeons when amputating a limb. I then took my sharpest knife, and with
one stroke cut the throat. But oh, horror! The dead op