My strange voice, disused from speaking, penetrated into the room.
But he died at the very instant that I gave him my madman's alms. His head dropped back stiffly, his eyeballs rolled. Anna came in again. She must have caught the sound of my outcry vaguely, for she hesitated.
She saw him. A fearful cry burst from her with all the force of her healthy body, a true widow's cry. She dropped on her knees at the bedside.
The nurse came in right after her and raised her arms. Silence reigned, that flashing up of incredible misery into which you sink completely in the presence of the dead, no matter who you are or where you are. The woman on her knees and the woman standing up watched the man who was stretched there, inert as if he had never lived. They were both almost dead.
Then Anna wept like a child. She rose. The nurse went to tell the others. Instinctively, Anna, who was wearing a light waist, picked up a black shawl that the nurse had left on a chair and put it around her.
. . . . .
The room, so recently desolate, now filled with life.
They lit candles everywhere, and the stars, visible through the window, disappeared.
They knelt down, and cried and prayed to him. The dead man held command. "He" was always on their lips. Servants were there whom I had not yet seen but whom he knew well. These people around him all seemed to be lying, as though it was they who were suffering, they who were dying, and he were alive.
"He must have suffered a great deal when he died," said the doctor, in a low voice to the nurse, at a moment when he was quite near me.