“My God, he won’t understand anything! …”
And the sick woman frowned and covered her eyes. The doctor went up and took her hand. The pulse was growing perceptibly weaker and weaker. He made a sign to the husband. The sick woman noticed this gesture and looked round in alarm. The cousin turned away, and burst into tears.
“Don’t cry, don’t torture yourself and me,” said the sick woman; “that destroys all the calm left me.”
“You are an angel!” said the cousin, kissing her hand.
“No, kiss me here, it’s only the dead who are kissed on the hand. My God! my God!”
The same evening the sick woman was a corpse, and the corpse lay in a coffin in the drawing-room of the great house. The doors of the big room were closed, and in it a deacon sat alone, reading the Psalms of David aloud in a rhythmic, nasal tone. The bright light of the wax candles in the tall silver candlesticks fell on the pale brow of the dead woman, on the heavy, waxen hands and the stone-like folds of the shroud, that jutted up horribly at the knees and toes. The deacon read on rhythmically without taking in the meaning of his own words, and the words echoed and died away strangely in the still room. From time to time the sounds of children’s voices and the tramp of their feet came from a faraway room.
“ ‘Thou unveilest Thy face, and they are confounded,’ ” the psalm-reader boomed; “ ‘Thou takest from them Thy breath, they die and return to the dust from which they came. Thou breathest Thy spirit into them—they are created and renew the earth. Glory be to God now and forever.’ ”