After a moment's silence the preacher would arise and go, but the sick man held him fast.
"Tell me a fairy tale," said he in a childish, touching voice.
"Hm! A fairy tale?"
"Yes, a fairy tale! About sprites, for example. Do this, I beg of you!"
The preacher sat down again, and when he saw that the sick man was in earnest, he let him have his way and narrated.
The commissioner listened with the greatest attention, but when the preacher, faithful to his habit, would give some moral erudition, he was interrupted by the sick man, who begged him to keep to the text.
"It is so good to hear old tales," said he; "it is like rest and to sink back into best memories of the time, when one was a little animal and loved the useless, the nonsensical, the meaningless. Repeat the Lord's Prayer for me now!"
"You don't believe in the Lord's Prayer?"
"No, not more than in the fairy tales: but it will do just as much good anyhow and when death approaches and one is going back again, one loves the old and becomes conservative. Repeat the Lord's Prayer. You shall have what I leave and your note back, if you repeat it."
The preacher hesitated a moment. Then he began to read.