“A terrible reality!” replied the three in chorus.
Pertinax wiped his brow with his shroud. He was perspiring philosophy. He began to believe that he was in the other world. The injustice of everything convinced him. “Then the cosmogony and the theogony of my infancy was the truth?”
“Yes; the first and only philosophy.”
“Then I am not dreaming?”
“No.”
“Confession! confession!” groaned the philosopher; and he swooned into the arms of Diogenes.
When he awoke, he found himself in his bed. His old servant and the priest were by his side.
“Here is the confessor, sir, for whom you asked....”
Pertinax sat up, stretched out both hands, and looking at the confessor with frightened eyes, cried—