“No!” exclaimed the professor.  “You’ll never go back!”

“But why?”

“I will not permit it!”

The Hebrew looked around.  He felt that something was wrong here.  His startled manner seemed to ask:  “Am I in a lunatic asylum?” He dropped his head and said to the professor simply: 

“I am tired.”

The professor pointed to the straw mattress.

“Go to sleep.  We will speak further in the morning.”

Fever blazed in the professor’s face.  On the other straw mattress General Gardener now slept with his face to the wall.

The Hebrew staggered to the straw mattress, threw himself down, and wept.  The weeping shook him terribly.  The professor sat at the table and smiled.

Finally the Hebrew fell asleep.  Hours passed in silence.  I stood motionless looking at the professor, who gazed into the candlelight.  There was not much left of it.  Presently he sighed and blew it out.  For a little while there was dark, and then I saw the dawn penetrating the yellow curtain at the window.  The professor leaned back in his chair, stretched out his feet, and closed his eyes.

All at once the Hebrew got up silently and went to the window.  He believed the professor was asleep.  He opened the window carefully and started to creep out.  The professor leaped from his chair, shouting: 

“No!”

He caught the Hebrew by his shroud and held him back.  There was a long knife in his hand.  Without another word, the professor pierced the Hebrew through the heart.

He put the limp body on the straw mattress, then went out of the chamber toward the studio.  In a few minutes he came back with father.  Father was pale and did not speak.  They covered the dead Hebrew with a rug, and then, one after the other, crept out through the window, lifted the corpse out, and carried it away.  In a quarter of an hour they came back.  They exchanged a few words, from which I learned that they had succeeded in putting the dead Hebrew back on his bier without having been observed.

They shut the window.  The professor drank a glass of wine and again stretched out his legs on the chair.

“It is impossible to go back,” he said.  “It is not allowed.”

Father went away.  I did not see him any more.  I staggered up to my room, went to bed, and slept immediately.  The next day I got up at ten o’clock.  I left the city at noon.

Since that time, my dear sisters, you have not seen me.  I don’t know anything more.  At this minute I say to myself that what I know, what I have set down here, is not true.  Maybe it never happened, maybe I have dreamed it all.  I am not clear in my mind.  I have a fever.

But I am not afraid of death.  Here, on my hospital bed, I see the professor’s feverish but calm and wise face.  When he grasped the Hebrew by the throat he looked like a lover of Death, like one who has a secret relation with the passing of life, who advocates the claims of Death, and who punishes him who would cheat Death.