"They are used to it, poor people. They searched a long time, and at last they discovered him at the foot of a precipice. It seems that the edge was hidden by those flowers. He leant over too much."
"He died like a child in a fairy tale, like a child," said the poet, his bright eyes now veiled.
Two other people entered without making a noise the room where Massimo Granata was sleeping the first night of his last sleep; the one was Giovanni Vergas, an Italian gentleman, seventy years old, with beautifully trimmed white beard and aristocratic and courteous appearance; the other was Monsieur Jean Morel, a Frenchman of seventy-five, thin, withered, without any skin on his face, furrowed by a thousand little wrinkles. Without speaking, they exchanged a nod with Karl Ehbehard and the two who were standing in the embrasure of the window, then they went and sat on a little sofa of black horsehair, which leant against a wall, and remained there silently. When the news of the tragedy arrived, at seven o'clock in the evening, both had been informed, and they had found Karl Ehbehard there, who, in great silence, was laying out the fractured body of the poor dead man. He washed and clothed it, then placed it quietly again on the bed, covering it with a quilt, then the good mistress of the house, Frau von Scheidegg, scattered two rows of flowers around the corpse, as she wept silently. Don Giovanni Vergas and Jean Morel had remained there a little, then they promised to return. Now they had returned to watch with the others the body of the lover of the mountains, of him who had given his life for his love. Paul Léon, being informed, had arrived later than the others from Sils Maria, and he was still asking questions to learn everything, with a trembling and sorrowful curiosity, from Otto von Raabe, of the beautiful, dreamy soul, of the heart sensitive and soft in spite of his rough, wild appearance.
Slowly, with cautious steps, they approached the other two and sat beside them, forming a little restricted circle, as they bent their heads to breathe forth the sorrowful words of their sad conversation. Isolated, and wrapped up in his silence, Karl von Ehbehard watched over his friend and companion, his brother in love of the mountains.
"How old could he be?" asked Jean Morel.
"Sixty, perhaps," replied Giovanni Vergas.
"He looked more," murmured Paul Léon.
"He never was young; he never has been healthy; he always suffered so much," explained Otto von Raabe.
"Only here he did not suffer," concluded the French poet.
Some minutes of silence passed, each appeared immersed in his own intimate thoughts.