hat appetite for
death, that greedy hungering for the end which the Commander showed. Ah!
to sleep, to sleep without a dream, in the infinite darkness forever and
ever--nothing in the world could have seemed so sweet to him. He did not
hope in a better life; he had no desire to become happy, at last, in
Paradise where equality and justice would reign. His sole longing was for
black night and endless sleep, the joy of being no more, of never, never
being again. And Doctor Chassaigne also had shuddered, for he also
nourished but one thought, the thought of the happy moment when he would
depart. But, in his case, on the other side of this earthly existence he
would find his dear lost ones awaiting him, at the spot where eternal
life began; and how icy cold all would have seemed had he but for a
single moment thought that he might not meet them there.

Abbe Judaine painfully rose up. It had seemed to him that the Commander
was now fixing his bright eyes upon Marie. Deeply grieved that his
entreaties should have been of no avail, the priest wished to show the
dying man an example of that goodness of God which he repulsed.

"You recognise her, do you not?" he asked. "Yes, it is the young lady who
arrived here on Saturday so ill, with both legs paralysed. And you see
her now, so full of health, so strong, so beautiful. Heaven has taken
pity on her, and now she is reviving to youth, to the long life she was
born to live. Do you feel no regret in seeing her? Would you also like
her to be dead? would you have advised her not to drink the water?"

The Commander could not answer; but his eyes no longer strayed from
Marie's young face, on which one read such great happiness at having
resuscitated, such vast hopes in countless morrows; and tears appeared in
those fixed eyes of his, gathered under their lids, and rolled down his
cheeks, which were already cold. He was certainly weeping for her; he
must have been thinking of that other miracle which he had wished
her--that if she should be cured, she might be happy. It was the
tenderness of an old man, who knows the miseries of this world, stirred
to pity by the thought of all the sorrows which awaited this young
creature. Ah! poor woman, how many times; perhaps, might she regret that
she had not died in her twentieth year!

Then the Commander's eyes grew very dim, as though those last pitiful
tears had dissolved them. It was the end; coma was coming; the mind was
departing with the