'Here is the fruit of the tree of life,' he went on, extending his open hand. 'The respectable man but smells its rind; I eat deep, taste the core. The smell is sweet, perhaps; the taste is deathly bitter. But even so? He that eats of the fruit of the tree of life shares the vision of the gods. He gazes upon the naked face of truth. I don't pretend that the face of truth is beautiful. It is hideous beyond imagination. All hate, all savagery, all evil, glare from it, and all uncleanness is upon it. But it is the face of truth; the sight of it gives an ultimate, a supreme satisfaction.
'Say what you will, at the end of life the important thing is to have lived. Well, when all is over, and the prosperous man and I lie equal in the article of death, our fortunes, conditions, outlooks at last for once the same, our results the same, I shall have lived, I shall have seen, I shall have understood, a thousandfold more than he. I shall have known life in her intimacy; he will have had but a polite acquaintance with her.'
The hour for Bibi to put this philosophy to the test was nearer than he suspected. He used to describe himself as 'thoroughly cured and seasoned,' and to predict that he would 'last a good while yet.' But, one day in December, a subject of remark in the Boul' Miche was Bibi's absence; and before nightfall the news went abroad that he had been found on the turf, under a tree, in the Avenue de l'Observatoire, dead from a coup de sang, and that he was now lying exposed to the gaze of the curious in the little brick house behind Notre Dame.
A meeting of students was called, at which it was resolved to give Bibi a decent funeral; and in order that his friends who had crossed the river might have an opportunity of assisting at it, a lettre de faire part was published in the newspapers. The Committee who had these matters in charge made an attempt to get a Pope from the Russian Church to officiate; but the holy men were scandalised by the request, and refused it with contumely. So a civil funeral was the best that could be achieved.
On a drizzling, dismal December morning, then, we formed ourselves in a procession of two abreast, and starting from the Place St. Michel, followed Bibi up his familiar Boulevard to the Cemetery of Montparnasse; and men who would have spurned him yesterday, bared their heads as he passed, and women crossed themselves and muttered prayers. We must have been about a hundred strong, and quite a quarter of our numbers came from beyond the bridges, responsive to our lettre de faire part. A student was told off to march with each visitor; and this arrangement proved the means of my being able to supply the missing chapter of Bibi's story.
The person to whom I found myself assigned was an elderly, military-looking man, with the red rosette in his buttonhole; extremely well-dressed and groomed; erect, ruddy, bright-eyed; with close-cropped white hair, and a drooping white moustache: the picture of a distinguished, contented, fine old French gentleman: whom I marvelled a good deal to see in this conjunction.
On our way to the graveyard we spoke but little. Our business there over, however, he offered me a seat in his carriage, a brougham that had sauntered after us, for the return. And no sooner was the carriage door closed upon us than he began—
'I am an old man. I want to talk. Will you listen?
'This death, this funeral, have stirred me deeply. I knew Kasghine years ago in Russia, when we were both young men, he an officer in the Russian army, I an attaché to the French Embassy.
'His career has been a very sad one. It illustrates many sad truths.