"Birth and death both belong to life; they constitute two opposites which condition each other; they are the two extreme poles in each manifestation of life. This is just what the deepest of all mythologies, the Hindu, has expressed by investing Siva the goddess of destruction with a necklace of skulls and the Lingam, the organ of reproduction. Death is the painful dissolution of a knot which was tied in pleasure, it is the forcible doing away with the fundamental mistake of our existence, it is deliverance from a delusion."
He let the book drop, for he heard someone crying and tossing about in his bed. Who was in the bed? He saw a body, the under part of which was painfully contorted by cramp, while the muscles of the chest stood out strained like the staves of a cask, and he heard a low, hollow sound like a shriek smothered under the bed-clothes. It was his own body! Had he then been divided into two, that he heard and saw himself as though he were another person? The screaming continued. The door opened and the mild-mannered landlady came in, probably alter knocking.
"What does the gentleman want?" she asked with shining eyes and a peculiar smile upon her lips.
"I!" answered the sick man. "Nothing! But I am very ill and would like to see a doctor."
"There is no doctor here, but the priest is accustomed to help us," answered the woman, smiling no longer.
"Send for the priest then," said the lieutenant, "though I don't generally like them."
"But when one is ill, one likes them," said the woman, and disappeared.
When the priest entered he went to the bed and took the sick man's wrist.
"What do you think it is?" asked the latter. "What do you think it is?"
"A bad conscience," was the priest's brief reply.