The Bishop’s candlesticks were in their place on the chimneypiece. He took from a drawer two wax candles and put them in the candlesticks. Then, although it was still broad daylight⁠—it was summer⁠—he lighted them. In the same way candles are to be seen lighted in broad daylight in chambers where there is a corpse.

Every step that he took in going from one piece of furniture to another exhausted him, and he was obliged to sit down. It was not ordinary fatigue which expends the strength only to renew it; it was the remnant of all movement possible to him, it was life drained which flows away drop by drop in overwhelming efforts and which will never be renewed.