on by relating in a sepulchral voice the
following anecdote:

A peculiar thing took place at Ghent while I was staying there. A lady
ten years a widow lay on her bed attacked by mortal sickness. The
three heirs of collateral lineage were waiting for her last sigh. They
did not leave her side for fear that she would make a will in favor of
the convent of Beguins belonging to the town. The sick woman kept
silent, she seemed dozing and death appeared to overspread very
gradually her mute and livid face. Can't you imagine those three
relations seated in silence through that winter midnight beside her
bed? An old nurse is with them and she shakes her head, and the doctor
sees with anxiety that the sickness has reached its last stage, and
holds his hat in one hand and with the other makes a sign to the
relations, as if to say to them: "I have no more visits to make here."
Amid the solemn silence of the room is heard the dull rustling of a
snow-storm which beats upon the shutters. For fear that the eyes of
the dying woman might be dazzled by the light, the youngest of the
heirs had fitted a shade to the candle which stood near that bed so
that the circle of light scarcely reached the pillow of the deathbed,
from which the sallow countenance of the sick woman stood out like a
figure of Christ imperfectly gilded and fixed upon a cross of
tarnished silver. The flickering rays shed by the blue flames of a
crackling fire were therefore the sole light of this sombre chamber,
where the denouement of a drama was just ending. A log suddenly rolled
from the fire onto the floor, as if presaging some catastrophe. At the
sound of it the sick woman quickly rose to a sitting posture. She
opened two eyes, clear as those of a cat, and all present eyed her in
astonishment. She saw the log advance, and before any one could check
an unexpected movement which seemed prompted by a kind of delirium,
she bounded from her bed, seized the tongs and threw the coal back
into the fireplace. The nurse, the doctor, the relations rushed to her
assistance; they took the dying woman in their arms. They put her back
in bed; she laid her head upon her pillow and after a few minutes
died, keeping her eyes fixed even after her death upon that plank in
the floor which the burning brand had touched. Scarcely had the
Countess Van Ostroem expired when the three co-heirs exchanged looks
of suspicion, and thinking no more about their aunt, began to examine
the myster