XXXIV
Thereafter ... I know not what ... I knew nothing more....
Morning ... morning, and raining still. Through the grated window of my bedroom-prison, a sticky viscous light was making its way. I was lying on the bed. When I awakened, I tried to rise on my elbow to look around me. I could not: I had not the strength.
But suddenly I could see ... I could see, in another place....
Rushing water ... tall green reeds ... moss ... a lofty, vertical wall of rock ... white cobblestones washed by a tumbling stream ... and, on the jagged point of a boulder, a corpse, my corpse, me....
I could see that my clothing was soaked, the water covering my breast and shoulders, and filling my wide opened eyes.... But I did not feel the cold liquid contact of the stream, nor the chilling north wind, laden with rain, that was beating upon my back and legs which were out of water on the narrow bank of the torrent there. I could feel nothing. I was dead. I mean to say that the Man was dead, that Man who was, and still is, I. I could see a large red hole in the back of his head—the wound made by the rock He struck, the wound through which his life had spurted away.... The back of my head ... of me who was lying there on that bed in that chamber ... pained me terribly.
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So I lay there, inert. Several times I tried to move. Move I could not; nor was there anything I could do. Through the half-opened window the resinous fragrance of rain-soaked fir-trees came. For a moment, they entered the room—the Count François and the Vicomte Antoine, I mean. They examined me, felt my pulse, my legs and arms, the back of my head. But soon they went out again. I was left alone.
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