I knelt and raised his head upon my arm.
“Don’t touch me!” he cried. “Can’t you let me die?” Writhing in paroxysms of intense pain, his face livid, his body horribly distorted, he ground his teeth and foamed at the mouth.
The sight was awful; yet we were utterly powerless.
A violent trembling suddenly shook his whole frame, and his palsied limbs stretched themselves out rigidly in the final struggle for existence.
Then he gasped. The breath left his body, and he lay pale and motionless under the starlight. Ivan Liustig was dead!
So quickly had all this happened, that scarcely any one had been attracted. As we lifted the body and carried it tenderly into the restaurant the strains of the “Boje Zara chrani,” floating over the lake, formed a jarring, incongruous dirge to our silent, sorrowful cortège.
A doctor was quickly procured, but as soon as he touched him he removed his hat respectfully, and pronounced him beyond human aid. I handed him the pieces of broken glass which I had picked from the gravelled walk. He smelt them, and finding a drop of wine remaining, dipped the tip of his little finger into it, and placed it upon his tongue.
“Strychnine,” he remarked. “Without a doubt.”
Reverently they covered the body with a tablecloth, and it was subsequently conveyed away.