"How strange it is that I feel nothing at all! It's the first time in my life. Ah, my wife is crying. Well, now you cry, but before, when anything went wrong, you flew into a rage. My little son is crying too. No doubt he will grow up a good-for-nothing fellow—the sons of writers, I have noticed, always do. No doubt that also is in accordance with some law of nature. What an infernal number of such laws there are."
So he lay and thought and thought, and wondered at his composure. He was not accustomed to it.
They started for the cemetery, but as he was being borne along he suddenly felt there were not enough mourners.
"No matter," said he to himself, "though I may not be a very great writer, literature must be respected."
He looked out of the coffin and saw that, as a matter of fact, without counting his relations, only nine people accompanied him, among whom were two beggars and a lamplighter with a ladder over his shoulder.
At this discovery he became quite indignant.
"What swine!"
The slight so incensed him that he immediately became resurrected, and, being a small man, jumped unperceived out of his coffin. He ran into a barber's, had his moustache and beard shaved off, and borrowed a black coat with a patch under the armpit, leaving his own coat in its stead. Then he made his face look solemn and aggrieved, and became like a living man. It was impossible to recognise him.
With the curiosity natural to his profession he asked the barber:
"Are you not astonished at this strange incident?"