“Oh, don’t go, I beg of you. I must talk to you.”
The doctor dared not say no, but he knew that the hour of death was swiftly approaching. A moment later he left the room, saying:—
“I’ll return directly.”
He sent a neighbor for the priest, then returned as he had promised, and sat down by the head of the bed.
Jaime asked the doctor to do him the favor to put his hand under the mattress and take out a packet which he would find there. After the doctor had pulled out the packet, Jaime began to speak:—
“Doctor, I ask you not to open this packet until after I am dead, and after that, with the help of your own conscience, you will decide what you think had best be done. I want you, if any personal advantage can come to you from it, to use it all for yourself. I have no affection for any one else, nor am I in debt to any one. If this were not my last hour on earth I should say that my soul held nothing but hatred for the evil received from those I most cherished.”
The sick man seemed fatigued and the doctor told him to rest a few moments, but now the man began to make those motions of the hands, so characteristic of those about to die, and to plait and unplait the bed clothing. He did not seem to know exactly what he was saying and his eyes wandered restlessly about the room:—
“She deceived me. How much I loved her! Her beautiful black eyes! How pretty she was! And he my best friend! It was infamous, shameful! I saw them! the truth is proof enough! Ah, how much blood flowed from the wound!—he did not mind dying because he knew she loved him. And I envied him after he was dead! Ah, how hard the punishment! How dark the cell, how heavy the shackles! It is shameful! I am an assassin! Every one has left me! How blue the sky is! How fresh and green the fields! I can’t get out with these horrible irons on my wrists!”
The priest came in time to administer the extreme unction. Jaime died shortly after and the doctor returned home with the packet under his arm. Once in his study, before going to bed, he decided to open the bundle which Jaime had give him with so much mystery. It was an easy task. He untied the paper and out fell what seemed to be a magazine. There were hundreds of leaves, but each leaf was a banknote of four thousand reals.
Daylight glimmered through the curtains. Doctor Santos had not closed his eyes. He was the owner, the rightful owner of more than four thousand pésétas (one hundred thousand dollars) and the donation was absolutely legitimate. Jaime’s mind, as no one knew better than he, was perfectly clear at the time he made the gift. What should he do with all that money! He would be happy, all his friends would be happy, in fact, everyone would be happy! What a library, what a laboratory, he would have!