red with us. She was
one of those devoted creatures upon whose solicitude you rely to close
your eyes. Our bodies, when we were ill or indisposed, were accustomed
to her attentions. She was familiar with all our hobbies. She had known
all our mistresses. She was a piece of our life, part of the furniture
of our apartment, a stray memory of our youth, at once loving and
scolding and care-taking, like a watchdog whom we were accustomed to
having always beside us and about us, and who ought to last as long as
ourselves. And we shall never see her again! It is not she moving about
the rooms; she will never again come to our rooms to bid us
good-morning! It is a great wrench, a great change in our lives, which
seems to us, I cannot say why, like one of those solemn breaks in one's
existence, when, as Byron says, destiny changes horses.

_Sunday, August 17._--This morning we are to perform all the last sad
duties. We must return to the hospital, enter once more the reception
hall, where I seem to see again, in the armchair against the wicket, the
ghost of the emaciated creature I seated there less than a week ago.
"Will you identify the body?" the attendant hurls the question at me in
a harsh voice. We go to the further end of the hospital, to a high
yellow door, upon which is written in great black letters:
_Amphitheatre_. The attendant knocks. After some moments the door is
partly opened, and a head like a butcher's boy's appears, with a short
pipe in its mouth: a head which suggests the gladiator and the
grave-digger. I fancied that I was at the circus, and that he was the
slave who received the gladiators' bodies; and he does receive the slain
in that great circus, society. They made us wait a long while before
opening another door, and during those moments of suspense, all our
courage oozed away, as the blood of a wounded man who is forced to
remain standing oozes away, drop by drop. The mystery of what we were
about to see, the horror of a sight that rends your heart, the search
for the one body amid other bodies, the scrutiny and recognition of that
poor face, disfigured doubtless--the thought of all this made us as
timid as children. We were at the end of our strength, at the end of our
will-power, at the end of our nervous tension, and, when the door
opened, we said: "We will send some one," and fled. From there we went
to the mayor's office, riding in a cab that jolted us and shook our
heads about like empty things.