grave which cleanses.  Brethren, the inevitable hand is in it.  Remember that it was we who just now did our best to send on high that child, and that at this very moment, now as I speak, there is perhaps, above our heads, a soul accusing us before a Judge whose eye is on us.  Let us make the best use of this last respite; let us make an effort, if we still may, to repair, as far as we are able, the evil that we have wrought.  If the child survives us, let us come to his aid; if he is dead, let us seek his forgiveness.  Let us cast our crime from us.  Let us ease our consciences of its weight.  Let us strive that our souls be not swallowed up before God, for that is the awful shipwreck.  Bodies go to the fishes, souls to the devils.  Have pity on yourselves.  Kneel down, I tell you.  Repentance is the bark which never sinks.  You have lost your compass!  You are wrong!  You still have prayer.”

The wolves became lambs—­such transformations occur in last agonies; tigers lick the crucifix; when the dark portal opens ajar, belief is difficult, unbelief impossible.  However imperfect may be the different sketches of religion essayed by man, even when his belief is shapeless, even when the outline of the dogma is not in harmony with the lineaments of the eternity he foresees, there comes in his last hour a trembling of the soul.  There is something which will begin when life is over; this thought impresses the last pang.

A man’s dying agony is the expiration of a term.  In that fatal second he feels weighing on him a diffused responsibility.  That which has been complicates that which is to be.  The past returns and enters into the future.  What is known becomes as much an abyss as the unknown.  And the two chasms, the one which is full by his faults, the other of his anticipations, mingle their reverberations.  It is this confusion of the two gulfs which terrifies the dying man.

They had spent their last grain of hope on the direction of life; hence they turned in the other.  Their only remaining chance was in its dark shadow.  They understood it.  It came on them as a lugubrious flash, followed by the relapse of horror.  That which is intelligible to the dying man is as what is perceived in the lightning.  Everything, then nothing; you see, then all is blindness.  After death the eye will reopen, and that which was a flash will become a sun.

They cried out to the doctor,—­

“Thou, thou, there is no one but thee.  We will obey thee, what must we do?  Speak.”

The doctor answered,—­

“The question is how to pass over the unknown precipice and reach the other bank of life, which is beyond the tomb.  Being the one who knows the most, my danger is greater than yours.  You do well to leave the choice of the bridge to him whose burden is the heaviest.”

He added,—­

“Knowledge is a weight added to conscience.”

He continued,—­

“How much time have we still?”