Not once, however, did he pause in those labours which added steadily to the pile of his writings. Although the author appeared to be suffering a more than mortal agony, and that even as he wrote he sought the merciful respite of death, he never once faltered, nor looked up, nor refrained an instant from his task.
Towards the hour of eight in the evening, the listening ears of the aged man, his father, heard a loud tapping upon the shutters of the shop. He rose at once from his place beside the hearth and went forth of the little room, and opened very softly, yet with a kind of despair as he did so, the outer door of the shop.
“Who is he who beats upon the ears of us in our little room?” he asked of him who stood out upon the threshold of the night.
“Has he awakened?” asked the anxious visitor. “I have been fearing all day lest he should not wake any more.”
“He is awake and he is writing his treatise,” said the old man devoutly.
“I must see him,” said the man from the street. “You must let me see him. I will not go beyond the shop. And I will not disturb him as I walk across it.”
“He is writing his treatise,” said the old man in a tone that would seem to deny him.
“Oh!” cried the man from the street piteously, “I must see him, if only for a moment, now that he is awake.”
And so great were the entreaties of the man from the street, that the old man, enjoining many earnest restrictions upon him, led him at last with infinite caution through the dark shop, to look upon the face of him who wrote.
However, no sooner had the man from the street looked upon the face of him he had craved to see than he uttered a suppressed cry of dismay and terror. For the face of the returned wayfarer seemed to be convulsed with a mortal agony.