At length when he had grown very feeble he expressed a desire to see a notary. The man he named was sent for and remained closeted with him for an hour or more, when he left for a while to return with several of his clerks, who accompanied him to my master’s room, from which I was excluded. Presently they all went away, bearing some parchments with them.
That evening Fonseca sent for me. I found him very weak, but cheerful and full of talk.
“Come here, nephew,” he said, “I have had a busy day. I have been busy all my life through, and it would not be well to grow idle at the last. Do you know what I have been doing this day?”
I shook my head.
“I will tell you. I have been making my will—there is something to leave; not so very much, but still something.”
“Do not talk of wills,” I said; “I trust that you may live for many years.”
He laughed. “You must think badly of my case, nephew, when you think that I can be deceived thus. I am about to die as you know well, and I do not fear death. My life has been prosperous but not happy, for it was blighted in its spring—no matter how. The story is an old one and not worth telling; moreover, whichever way it had read, it had all been one now in the hour of death. We must travel our journey each of us; what does it matter if the road has been good or bad when we have reached the goal? For my part religion neither comforts nor frightens me now at the last. I will stand or fall upon the record of my life. I have done evil in it and I have done good; the evil I have done because nature and temptation have been too strong for me at times, the good also because my heart prompted me to it. Well, it is finished, and after all death cannot be so terrible, seeing that every human being is born to undergo it, together with all living things. Whatever else is false, I hold this to be true, that God exists and is more merciful than those who preach Him would have us to believe.” And he ceased exhausted.
Often since then I have thought of his words, and I still think of them now that my own hour is so near. As will be seen Fonseca was a fatalist, a belief which I do not altogether share, holding as I do that within certain limits we are allowed to shape our own characters and destinies. But his last sayings I believe to be true. God is merciful, and death is not terrible either in its act or in its consequence.
Presently Fonseca spoke again. “Why do you lead me to talk of such things? They weary me and I have little time. I was telling of my will. Nephew, listen. Except certain sums that I have given to be spent in charities—not in masses, mind you—I have left you all I possess.”
“You have left it to me!” I said astonished.