Thanks to pantopon, he spent a very good night. He awoke about five o’clock, but remained so quiet that I thought him asleep. When I rose about six he held out his hand to me and told me he had been awake for a long time. He talked to me tenderly, in the full intimacy of our affection; he spoke sweet, unforgettable words. He made me promise once again not to give way to grief. “At first, our friends will help you, and then work, that infallible remedy, and duty.... You will have that of writing my biography. Remember how much I wish the last chapter to be complete. You alone can write it, for you have seen me all the time; I have told you all my thoughts, and yet....” I understood that he had occasionally, out of pity for me, hidden his sufferings and his sad thoughts. But he did not know how often I guessed what he did not say; love and pain have a dumb language, more eloquent than any human words.
“You will hold my hand when the moment comes,” he repeated. “But do not think I am afraid, now that it is near. No, I assure you, I have an absolute serenity of soul! I spent a divine night. It seemed to me that I was already half outside life. This night has taught me many things.... Everything which troubled me, everything that seemed so disturbing, so terrible, like this war for instance, seems so transitory now, such a small thing by the side of the great problems of existence!... Science will solve them some day.” He ceased speaking. He seemed illumined by a very exalted feeling; it was like the last chord of his harmonious soul. What a consolation if he could have died then!
But life is cruel. He lived through two more days of suffering. On the 14th he inhaled oxygen almost continually. He asked for pantopon, but we feared to give him too much. I told him it would induce such continuous sleep that he would not even be able to enjoy it. “But an eternal sleep is precisely what I want! Do understand that now nothing is left to me but pantopon. What is the good of making me last? Is this a life? A few days or a month have no importance when one is not going to recover. And you cannot wish to prolong my sufferings.” His breathlessness increased; he said, “Give me your hand; stay near me!” I knew what he meant; he had the “death-sensation.”
His poor hands were hot and warmed my cold ones.... The next day I could not warm his hands, ice-cold for ever.
The whole day he awaited with impatience the hour for pantopon. About nine o’clock, when Dr. Darré came in, he said, “Dear Darré, at last!”
There was no talk that evening, he was so weary. With what anguish I awaited the stroke of midnight, which ended those two dread days! He had been mistaken by barely one day. The night was not bad, in spite of breathlessness and some fits of coughing. The next morning he felt better. He had not read the papers the day before, to-day I read him the communiqués in the Petit Parisien, he said it was enough. He also turned the pages of a book he had recently begun to read, La Science et les Allemands.
I told him how pleased I was to see him better. “It is true,” he said, “to-day I have no death-sensation, but I beg you, have no illusions!”
Always that preoccupation of breaking the shock for me. He made me bring a pocket-book with some money in it and a few envelopes; in each of them he made me place notes of similar value, then with his already shaking hand, he himself wrote on each envelope the value of the notes multiplied by their number, and explained that it was to help me to find quickly what I should require after the catastrophe.
He ate better at lunch than he had done lately; but already at two o’clock the breathlessness increased. Yet he did not look pale; he had preserved his rosy complexion. As he inhaled the oxygen, he was shaken by a hiccough. He pressed my hand. “It is the end,” he said, “the death rattle; that is how people die.” He looked at his watch on the small table, it marked four o’clock.