e at home, when, said he, they ought to have done so
before coming to Lourdes. Well, all at once, while he was talking like
this, he fell on the ground before me. It was his third attack of
paralysis; the one he had long been expecting."

"Oh! _mon Dieu_," murmured Abbe Judaine, who heard the doctor, "he was
blaspheming. Heaven has punished him."

M. de Guersaint and Marie were listening, greatly interested and deeply
moved.

"I had him carried yonder, into that shed," continued the doctor. "It is
all over; I can do nothing. He will doubtless be dead before a quarter of
an hour has gone by. But I thought of a priest, and hastened up to you."

Then, turning towards Abbe Judaine, M. Chassaigne added: "Come with me,
Monsieur le Cure; you know him. We cannot let a Christian depart
unsuccoured. Perhaps he will be moved, recognise his error, and become
reconciled with God."

Abbe Judaine quickly followed the doctor, and in the rear went M. de
Guersaint, leading Marie and Pierre, whom the thought of this tragedy
impassioned. All five entered the goods shed, at twenty paces from the
crowd which was still bustling and buzzing, without a soul in it
expecting that there was a man dying so near by.

In a solitary corner of the shed, between two piles of sacks filled with
oats, lay the Commander, on a mattress borrowed from the Hospitality
reserve supply. He wore his everlasting frock-coat, with its buttonhole
decked with a broad red riband, and somebody who had taken the precaution
to pick up his silver-knobbed walking-stick had carefully placed it on
the ground beside the mattress.

Abbe Judaine at once leant over him. "You recognise us, you can hear us,
my poor friend, can't you?" asked the priest.

Only the Commander's eyes now appeared to be alive; but they _were_
alive, still glittering brightly with a stubborn flame of energy. The
attack had this time fallen on his right side, almost entirely depriving
him of the power of speech. He could only stammer a few words, by which
he succeeded in making them understand that he wished to die there,
without being moved or worried any further. He had no relative at
Lourdes, where nobody knew anything either of his former life or his
family. For three years he had lived there happily on the salary attached
to his little post at the station, and now he at last beheld his ardent,
his only desire, approaching fulfilment--the desire that he might depart
and fall into the eternal sle