“Do let me die in peace!”
Schmucke almost died of sorrow, but he took Pons’ hand and softly kissed it, and held it between his own, as if trying a second time to give his own vitality to his friend.
Just at this moment the bell rang, and Dr. Poulain, going to the door, admitted the Abbe Duplanty.
“Our poor patient is struggling in the grasp of death,” he said. “All will be over in a few hours. You will send a priest, no doubt, to watch to-night. But it is time that Mme. Cantinet came, as well as a woman to do the work, for M. Schmucke is quite unfit to think of anything: I am afraid for his reason; and there are valuables here which ought to be in the custody of honest persons.”
The Abbe Duplanty, a kindly, upright priest, guileless and unsuspicious, was struck with the truth of Dr. Poulain’s remarks. He had, moreover, a certain belief in the doctor of the quarter. So on the threshold of the death-chamber he stopped and beckoned to Schmucke, but Schmucke could not bring himself to loosen the grasp of the hand that grew tighter and tighter. Pons seemed to think that he was slipping over the edge of a precipice and must catch at something to save himself. But, as many know, the dying are haunted by an hallucination that leads them to snatch at things about them, like men eager to save their most precious possessions from a fire. Presently Pons released Schmucke to clutch at the bed-clothes, dragging them and huddling them about himself with a hasty, covetous movement significant and painful to see.
“What will you do, left alone with your dead friend?” asked M. l’Abbe Duplanty when Schmucke came to the door. “You have not Mme. Cibot now—”
“Ein monster dat haf killed Bons!”
“But you must have somebody with you,” began Dr. Poulain. “Some one must sit up with the body to-night.”
“I shall sit up; I shall say die prayers to Gott,” the innocent German answered.
“But you must eat—and who is to cook for you now?” asked the doctor.