Months had passed. It was winter, Parisian winter, the snowless, penetrating winter of mid-February; and it was night, pitch dark, and the hazy fog, like thick smoke, dimmed the street lamps on the Avenue, even the stronger lights around the corner of the adjacent Champs Elysées spread only a glow without illumination. There was the stillness of a winter night everywhere, the stillness of a belated hour, long past midnight, the stillness of a great city asleep.
In a room on the fifth story of a drab looking building, Albert was struggling for breath. He had coughed so much that he had no more strength to cough aloud, only his chest was heaving and the expression on his emaciated face, resembling a grim grin, betrayed acute suffering, the suffering beyond expression. He was propped up with pillows in a reclining posture to ease his breathing, and from time to time he hoisted his right shoulder as if to help his breathing. A candle light on a nearby table cast a shadow in the room, and beyond the shadow sat the woman attendant, dozing.
The clock on the white marble mantle struck the hour. Semi-consciously the invalid counted the strokes—“One, two, three, four!”
The nurse jumped up, picked up a little bottle and spoon from the table, and crossed the chamber toward the bed.
The invalid stirred and shook his head.
“But Monsieur Zorn, the Doctor will scold me if I don’t give you the medicine punctually,” the nurse said.
“Be at ease! I’ll tell the doctor myself that I did not want to drink it. Medicine does me no more good.”
She did not understand him, for the past two days he had been addressing her in German, which was unknown to her beyond “Ja” and “Nein.” However, she divined his meaning and put the medicine away with a kindly smile.
He turned his head away and promptly forgot the attendant and the medicine. The strokes of the clock were still dinning in his ears; they sounded to him like church bells, like the strange sounds of psalters and harps, like—his mind wandered—the bells of St. Lombard’s Church were ringing and he was watching Christian Lutz jerk his forefingers in and out of his ears. Christian said angels floated around the belfry when the bells rang. Albert laughed. Angels never flew that low, he insisted, but hovered around God’s throne; only pigeons flew around the belfry. And that pug-nosed Fritz with his fishing rod screeched “Al—ber!” . . .
Would that clock ever stop striking the hour? It was positively deafening. He was glad Marguerite slept in a room at the furthest end of the apartment, so she could not hear him cough at night, and now she wouldn’t be disturbed by that crazy clock that was striking endlessly. He wished to call the nurse to make her stop the clock but some one was choking him—some one was gagging him—he could not make a sound! . . .