“That which I had uncovered was the head, white hair, nude shoulders and chest of a man already old, whose immobility and extraordinary pallor seemed inexpressibly terrible to me. I felt that I stood before a great event. Nothing can give an idea of the stupor which enveloped me. A hundred confusing questions surged in my brain. Has a man from his earliest years an intuition as to what will be the end of his life on earth? I firmly believe so. In any case I was not deceived for a single moment by the thought that I beheld a sleeping man. I understood that it was not a simple sleep. One is never so absent, so calm, when one only sleeps. But then what was it that I saw? What was he doing on the bench—that impassible being?
“‘Suppose I should call Aunt Marie?’ I said to myself; ‘Aunt Marie, who knows everything, and can do everything? Suppose, however, (but the simple thought seemed formidable to me) I should touch him first!’ And, in contradiction to the idea which I had that his sleep was not of that kind which could be disturbed. I said to myself again: ‘Perhaps he will get up. Perhaps he does not know that he is there.’
“I dared to place my hand on his shoulder. I drew it away quickly. That sort of cold was frightful.
“A dreadful thought flashed through my brain. The very truth of truths penetrated my inmost being. People must become like this when they are no longer alive. But then—— I had touched a dead man! I had thereby shown a disrespect toward him. I had troubled that which ought never to be troubled!
“My heart ceased to beat.”
“I imagined that I had done something irreparable. I tried to find a name for my action, which I judged abominable. The idea of sacrilege, one of those dreaded words of which a child does not comprehend the meaning, came into my mind, and I said to myself: ‘That is it, I have committed a sacrilege!’
“Terror took possession of me, and in my fright, instead of escaping through the door which was now quite near me, I took refuge, trembling, in the shadowy end of the room which had lately given me so much trouble to leave. Perhaps I hoped to escape more surely in the darkness from that vision, from that unexplained revelation of death which had then for the first time greeted me.
“I stood again with my face pressed against the wall at the end of the room prohibited to all, hardly breathing, without the power to cry, and not daring to turn round. I fell on my knees and, with a flood of tears, I demanded pardon of God for the great sin which I had committed, and prayed Him to show me the means of effacing it. Did God pardon me? I believe that he did, for I arose from my knees having formed a resolution to repair the wrong which I had done. But it must be done immediately, and all alone. I had uncovered the head of a dead man, and my duty was, first of all, to go and ask his pardon, and, secondly, to render him peaceful by recovering him as before.
“Such a resolution—the idea that he has a duty to accomplish—makes a man of even a child, once he has decided to perform it. I gathered together all my courage and started bravely enough. When I arrived a few steps from the bench and saw that terribly calm visage, with those marble lids closed forever, my heart failed me, and, taking flight, I very soon found myself at the end of the room.