He continued to get worse....
It was fortunate that pantopon should have given him good nights, for attacks of oppression now supervened several times during the day; tachycardia was continuous, the heart was weakening. The quantity of urine diminished; it often did not surpass 250 cubic centimetres, and no diuretic succeeded in increasing it; the legs remained swollen, ascitis was beginning to become visible; in the night he occasionally grew slightly delirious.
At the beginning of July he wished to sit up; he spent part of the afternoon in an armchair, his legs lying on cushions. We thought it was a good sign, but in reality he found it difficult to breathe lying down. Several times he asked me to play to him, very soft music, as noisy sounds wearied him. I played him some Beethoven, some Mozart; the last time it was a Chopin prelude.
On the 9th his temperature went down in an alarming way to 35.2° C. (95 F.). For the first time he would not write down his ordinary observations. “What is the good?” said he, “it has no longer any interest.” Yet the next day he did so, for the last time. On the 11th and 12th he put down his temperature, and glanced superficially at the notes I had written. On the 12th, about five o’clock in the morning, he had a bad fit of breathlessness followed by coughing, and brought up large clots of very red blood. He smiled faintly. “You understand what that means,” he said, adding some tender words.
I wheeled him to his bed, which he never left again.
On the 13th, in the early morning, he felt very ill. Calmly and gently he warned me to be ready. “It will surely be to-day or to-morrow.”
My heart breaking, I asked him why he said that; was he feeling very weak? or suffering very much?
“No,” he said, “it is difficult to say what I feel; I have never felt anything like it; it is, so to speak, a death-sensation.... But I feel very calm, with no fear. You will hold my hand, will you not?”
How can I describe those last three days? He preserved all his lucidity and serenity, often smiling at me and drawing me towards him. He inhaled oxygen very often, as breathlessness became almost continuous.
On the 14th there was to be a matinée performance of Manon Lescaut, and remembering that his god-children had long wished to see that opera, he had had a box taken for them. He was now quite uneasy about it. “What ill-luck,” he said, “if it happened just before and prevented them from going. In any case they must not come here on their way to the theatre, so that if it happens they will not know, and can still enjoy the performance.”