Through that lugubrious hour I squatted there, watching the awful process
of human dissolution for the first time.
Save in the case of Fifanti I had never yet seen death; nor could it be
said that I had really seen it then. With the pedant, death had been a
sudden sharp severing of the thread of life, and I had been conscious that
he was dead without any appreciation of death itself, blinded in part by my
own exalted condition at the time.
But in this death of Fra Sebastiano I was heated by no participation. I
was an unwilling and detached spectator, brought there by force of
circumstance; and my mind received from the spectacle an impression not
easily to be effaced, an impression which may have been answerable in part
for that which followed.
Towards dawn at last the sick man's babblings--and they were mostly as
profane and lewd as his occasional bursts of song--were quieted. The
unseeing glitter of his eyes that had ever and anon been turned upon us was
changed to a dull and heavy consciousness, and he struggled to rise, but
his limbs refused their office.
The priest leaned over him with a whispered word of comfort, then turned
and signed to me to leave the hut. I rose, and went towards the door. But
I had scarcely reached it when there was a hoarse cry behind me followed by
a gasping sob from the priest.
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