The consecrated candle shed a yellowish light upon her face impearled with the sweat of her last struggle and death agony. Her gray hair, scattered in a disheveled mass upon the pillow, formed a sort of background upon which appeared in sharper relief her withered head, shaking with the unconscious and frightful convulsions of death. She breathed heavily and slowly and gasped with effort, catching the air with her pale lips. At moments her face would writhe and her mouth twitch with a dreadful spasm of pain and she would raise her hands as though she wanted to tear apart her throat to get more air. Her white and fever-coated tongue slipped spasmodically from her mouth and so tense did her body become in the struggle with death that the veins stood out like black whip cords on; her temples and throat.
The silence was full of weeping and sobbing of those kneeling about and the awful groans of the dying woman. Feverishly whispered prayers, tear-streaming eyes, the sobbing of the servant and the children filled the room with an atmosphere of dreadful and overwhelming tragedy. The dark shadows at the farther end of the room trembled as though engulfing it all. The candles diffused a yellowish, ghastly light that seemed to steep everything in boundless grief.
The room filled up completely with kneeling people and only she, who lay there rigid, unconscious, and dying, reigned from the throne of death over that bowed throng begging for mercy.
An old man with silvery gray hair made his way to the bed, knelt down, took a prayer book from his pocket and, by the light of the candle, began to read the Penitential Psalms. He had a clear and melodious voice and the words of the psalms, like a murmuring rainbow, or like flashes of lightning full of terror, tears, might, and heavenly grace, floated above the heads of all those present:
"Have mercy upon me, O Lord, for I am weak; O Lord, heal me, for my bones are vexed."
"Thou art my hiding place; Thou shalt preserve me from trouble . . ."
"Many sorrows shall be to the wicked, but he that trusteth in the
Lord, mercy shall compass him about."
"My lovers and my friends stand aloof from my sore and my kinsmen stand afar off."
"They also that seek after my life lay snares for me; and they that seek for my hurt speak mischievous things and imagine deceits all day long."
The words rang out ever stronger and eddied through the air like the breath of a mighty power that bent low all foreheads and cast them down into the dust with tears of sorrow, penance, and supplication. All those present repeated them after the old man and that confused, tearful and monotonous murmur of voices awoke Janina from her torpor. She felt that she was still alive, so she knelt down on the threshold of the room and with fever-parched lips whispered those sweet words long since forgotten, and drew from them a deep comfort full of sadness and tenderness.