, just
because they took such unsteady note of him, which made Marius feel as
if guilty; anticipating thus a form of self-reproach with which even
the tenderest ministrant may be sometimes surprised, when, at death,
affectionate labour suddenly ceasing leaves room for the suspicion of
some failure of love perhaps, at one or another minute point in it.
Marius almost longed to take his share in the suffering, that he might
understand so the better how to relieve it.

It seemed that the light of the lamp distressed the patient, and Marius
extinguished it. The thunder which had sounded all day among the
hills, with a heat not unwelcome to Flavian, had given way at nightfall
to steady rain; and [119] in the darkness Marius lay down beside him,
faintly shivering now in the sudden cold, to lend him his own warmth,
undeterred by the fear of contagion which had kept other people from
passing near the house. At length about day-break he perceived that
the last effort had come with a revival of mental clearness, as Marius
understood by the contact, light as it was, in recognition of him
there. "Is it a comfort," he whispered then, "that I shall often come
and weep over you?"--"Not unless I be aware, and hear you weeping!"

The sun shone out on the people going to work for a long hot day, and
Marius was standing by the dead, watching, with deliberate purpose to
fix in his memory every detail, that he might have this picture in
reserve, should any hour of forgetfulness hereafter come to him with
the temptation to feel completely happy again. A feeling of outrage,
of resentment against nature itself, mingled with an agony of pity, as
he noted on the now placid features a certain look of humility, almost
abject, like the expression of a smitten child or animal, as of one,
fallen at last, after bewildering struggle, wholly under the power of a
merciless adversary. From mere tenderness of soul he would not forget
one circumstance in all that; as a man might piously stamp on his
memory the death-scene of a brother wrongfully condemned to die,
against a time that may come.

[120] The fear of the corpse, which surprised him in his effort to
watch by it through the darkness, was a hint of his own failing
strength, just in time. The first night after the washing of the body,
he bore stoutly enough the tax which affection seemed to demand,
throwing the incense from time to time on the little altar placed
beside the bier. It was the