it, his
expression changed immediately. His contracted muscles relaxed, his
mouth, almost invisible before under the great nose, showed a smile. The
tears on his cheeks dried; the prisoner was evidently dreaming of
something happy. The night hung over him, her visage veiled in black;
she murmured beloved names in his ear, and sent him only dreams of
happiness; then, softly and gently, she glided towards the Major.

What is the matter with him? He seems to be having a trembling-fit.
Night hangs over him and covers him with her black veil. Any one who
watched him just now would be struck with the sudden change in his
expression. His features betray astonishment and terror. He tries to
rise, to shake off the heavy chains of sleep, but night holds him in her
grasp. She has placed her hand on his chest. He sees a thing so strange
and extravagant that his blood turns to ice in his veins. The quiet
rooms of his home seem to be filled with a strange murmur. The children
rise in their beds and fix their eyes, dilated with terror, on a black
menacing cloud which hovers slowly above their heads. The father looks
at it. What is there in the cloud which so alarms his children? His
heart beats violently.

The cloud continues to descend. The children jump down from their beds.
The little boy who was sleeping in the next room runs hither. They call
their nurse--she has disappeared; there is nothing but a heap of old
rags in the place where she was lying. The children call to their
mother, but the black cloud hides her from their eyes. There they are
alone, face to face with it. It sinks slowly on the ground as though it
were descending into the waves of the ocean. Its vague fluctuating
outlines assume distinctness. The Major and his children at last
perceive what it contained. What they see is a body of enormous length
stretched out; round it are standing four little children with great
black eyes full of anguish and distress. The children weep bitterly, and
their tears fall on the corpse which they surround. The Major's children
approach them and begin to examine the body whose grey head, with its
large nose, the scar on the forehead, and the grey bristling
moustaches, leave no doubt in the Major's mind as to its identity. The
body is that of Mahmoud Bey. Everything is there--the fresh wound on the
shoulder, the clotted blood on the ragged cloak, the stiffened feet
wrapped in rags.

"But who ... who has done that?" asks the Major'