May her dear shade pardon this belated blossom, which I make bold to lay upon her grave!
September 1878.
THE LAST MEETING
We had once been close and warm friends.... But an unlucky moment came ... and we parted as enemies.
Many years passed by.... And coming to the town where he lived, I learnt that he was helplessly ill, and wished to see me.
I made my way to him, went into his room.... Our eyes met.
I hardly knew him. God! what sickness had done to him!
Yellow, wrinkled, completely bald, with a scanty grey beard, he sat clothed in nothing but a shirt purposely slit open.... He could not bear the weight of even the lightest clothes. Jerkily he stretched out to me his fearfully thin hand that looked as if it were gnawed away, with an effort muttered a few indistinct words—whether of welcome or reproach, who can tell? His emaciated chest heaved, and over the dwindled pupils of his kindling eyes rolled two hard-wrung tears of suffering.