“Sir, I have come to inform you that your father is dying; he has just been seized with an attack of apoplexy and the physicians despair of his life.”

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BOOK 2.

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PART III

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CHAPTER I. DEATH, THE INEVITABLE

My father lived in the country some distance from Paris. When I arrived I found a physician in the house, who said to me:

“You are too late; your father expressed a desire to see you before he died.”

I entered, and saw my father dead. “Sir,” I said to the physician, “please have everyone retire that I may be alone here; my father had something to say to me, and he will say it.”