ntering the town where he lived I
learned that he was hopelessly ill, and wished to see me.

I went to him, I entered his chamber.... Our glances met.

I hardly recognised him. O God! How disease had changed him!

Yellow, shrivelled, with his head completely bald, and a narrow, grey
beard, he was sitting in nothing but a shirt, cut out expressly.... He
could not bear the pressure of the lightest garment. Abruptly he
extended to me his frightfully-thin hand, which looked as though it had
been gnawed away, with an effort whispered several incomprehensible
words--whether of welcome or of reproach, who knows? His exhausted chest
heaved; over the contracted pupils of his small, inflamed eyes two
scanty tears of martyrdom flowed down.

My heart sank within me.... I sat down on a chair beside him, and
involuntarily dropping my eyes in the presence of that horror and
deformity, I also put out my hand.

But it seemed to me that it was not his hand which grasped mine.

It seemed to me as though there were sitting between us a tall, quiet,
white woman. A long veil enveloped her from head to foot. Her deep, pale
eyes gazed nowhere; her pale, stern lips uttered no sound....

That woman joined our hands.... She reconciled us forever.

Yes.... It was Death who had reconciled us....

April, 1878.

THE VISIT

I was sitting at the open window ... in the morning, early in the
morning, on the first of May.

The flush of dawn had not yet begun; but the dark, warm night was
already paling, already growing chill.

No fog had risen, no breeze was straying, everything was of one hue and
silent ... but one could scent the approach of the awakening, and in the
rarefied air the scent of the dew's harsh dampness was abroad.

Suddenly, into my chamber, through the open window, flew a large bird,
lightly tinkling and rustling.

I started, looked more intently.... It was not a bird: it was a tiny,
winged woman, clad in a long, close-fitting robe which billowed out at
the bottom.

She was all grey, the hue of mother-of-pearl; only the inner side of her
wings glowed with a tender flush of scarlet, like a rose bursting into
blossom; a garland of lilies-of-the-valley confined the scattered curls
of her small, round head,--and two peacock feathers quivered amusingly,
like the feelers of a butterfly, above the fair, rounded little
forehead.

She floated past a couple of times close to the ceiling: her tiny face
was laughing; la