Next day he did not come back.
After long hours of waiting, stiffened with the cold,
feeling that he was dying, the blind man began to
walk. Being unable to find his way along the
road, owing to its thick coating of ice, he went on
at random, falling into ditches, getting up again,
without uttering a sound, his sole object being to
find some house where he could take shelter.
But, by degrees, the descending snow made a numbness
steal over him, and his feeble limbs being incapable
of carrying him farther, he sat down in the middle
of an open field. He did not get up again.
The white flakes which fell continuously buried him,
so that his body, quite stiff and stark, disappeared
under the incessant accumulation of their rapidly
thickening mass, and nothing was left to indicate the
place where he lay.
His relatives made a pretence of inquiring about him
and searching for him for about a week. They
even made a show of weeping.
The winter was severe, and the thaw did not set in
quickly. Now, one Sunday, on their way to mass,
the farmers noticed a great flight of crows, who were
whirling incessantly above the open field, and then
descending like a shower of black rain at the same
spot, ever going and coming.
The following week these gloomy birds were still there.
There was a crowd of them up in the air, as if they
had gathered from all corners of the horizon, and
they swooped down with a great cawing into the shining
snow, which they covered like black patches, and in
which they kept pecking obstinately. A young
fellow went to see what they were doing and discovered
the body of the blind man, already half devoured, mangled.
His wan eyes had disappeared, pecked out by the long,
voracious beaks.
And I can never feel the glad radiance of sunlit days
without sadly remembering and pondering over the fate
of the beggar who was such an outcast in life that
his horrible death was a relief to all who had known
him.
They had loved each other before marriage with a pure
and lofty love. They had first met on the sea-shore.
He had thought this young girl charming, as she passed
by with her light-colored parasol and her dainty dress
amid the marine landscape against the horizon.
He had loved her, blond and slender, in these surroundings
of blue ocean and spacious sky. He could not
distinguish the tenderness which this budding woman
awoke in him from the vague and powerful emotion which
the fresh salt air and the grand scenery of surf and
sunshine and waves aroused in his soul.
She, on the other hand, had loved him because he courted
her, because he was young, rich, kind, and attentive.
She had loved him because it is natural for young
girls to love men who whisper sweet nothings to them.
So, for three months, they had lived side by side,
and hand in hand. The greeting which they exchanged
in the morning before the bath, in the freshness of
the morning, or in the evening on the sand, under the
stars, in the warmth of a calm night, whispered low,
very low, already had the flavor of kisses, though
their lips had never met.
