“One day she was carried into the house cold, lifeless, dead.  She had fallen down unconscious in the garden.  The doctor certified that life was extinct.  I watched by her side for a day and two nights.  I laid her with my own hands in the coffin, which I accompanied to the cemetery, where she was deposited in the family vault.  It is situated in the very heart of Lorraine.

“I wished to have her interred with her jewels, bracelets, necklaces, rings, all presents which she had received from me, and wearing her first ball dress.

“You may easily imagine my state of mind when I re-entered our home.  She was the only one I had, for my wife had been dead for many years.  I found my way to my own apartment in a half-distracted condition, utterly exhausted, and sank into my easy-chair, without the capacity to think or the strength to move.  I was nothing better now than a suffering, vibrating machine, a human being who had, as it were, been flayed alive; my soul was like an open wound.

“My old valet, Prosper, who had assisted me in placing Juliette in her coffin, and aided me in preparing her for her last sleep, entered the room noiselessly, and asked: 

“‘Does monsieur want anything?’

“I merely shook my head in reply.

“‘Monsieur is wrong,’ he urged.  ’He will injure his health.  Would monsieur like me to put him to bed?’

“I answered:  ‘No, let me alone!’

“And he left the room.

“I know not how many hours slipped away.  Oh, what a night, what a night!  It was cold.  My fire had died out in the huge grate; and the wind, the winter wind, an icy wind, a winter hurricane, blew with a regular, sinister noise against the windows.

“How many hours slipped away?  There I was without sleeping, powerless, crushed, my eyes wide open, my legs stretched out, my body limp, inanimate, and my mind torpid with despair.  Suddenly the great doorbell, the great bell of the vestibule, rang out.

“I started so that my chair cracked under me.  The solemn, ponderous sound vibrated through the empty country house as through a vault.  I turned round to see what the hour was by the clock.  It was just two in the morning.  Who could be coming at such an hour?

“And, abruptly, the bell again rang twice.  The servants, without doubt, were afraid to get up.  I took a wax candle and descended the stairs.  I was on the point of asking:  ‘Who is there?’

“Then I felt ashamed of my weakness, and I slowly drew back the heavy bolts.  My heart was throbbing wildly.  I was frightened.  I opened the door brusquely, and in the darkness I distinguished a white figure, standing erect, something that resembled an apparition.

“I recoiled petrified with horror, faltering: 

“‘Who-who-who are you?’

“A voice replied: 

“‘It is I, father.’

“It was my daughter.

“I really thought I must be mad, and I retreated backward before this advancing spectre.  I kept moving away, making a sign with my hand,’ as if to drive the phantom away, that gesture which you have noticed—­that gesture which has remained with me ever since.