His poor hands were hot and warmed my cold ones.... The next day I could not warm his hands, ice-cold for ever. The whole day he awaited with impatience the hour for pantopon. About nine o'clock, when Dr. Darré came in, he said, "Dear Darré, at last!" There was no talk that evening, he was so weary. With what anguish I awaited the stroke of midnight, which ended those two dread days! He had been mistaken by barely one day. The night was not bad, in spite of breathlessness and some fits of coughing. The next morning he felt better. He had not read the papers the day before, to-day I read him the communiqués in the _Petit Parisien_, he said it was enough. He also turned the pages of a book he had recently begun to read, _La Science et les Allemands_. I told him how pleased I was to see him better. "It is true," he said, "to-day I have no death-sensation, but I beg you, have no illusions!" Always that preoccupation of breaking the shock for me. He made me bring a pocket-book with some money in it and a few envelopes; in each of them he made me place notes of similar value, then with his already shaking hand, he himself wrote on each envelope the value of the notes multiplied by their number, and explained that it was to help me to find quickly what I should require after the catastrophe. He ate better at lunch than he had done lately; but already at two o'clock the breathlessness increased. Yet he did not look pale; he had preserved his rosy complexion. As he inhaled the oxygen, he was shaken by a hiccough. He pressed my hand. "It is the end," he said, "the death rattle; that is how people die." He looked at his watch on the small table, it marked four o'clock. "No," he said, "it must have stopped. Four o'clock struck some time ago." And he smiled. "Is it not strange that it should have stopped before I? Go and see what time it is." I ran out to see the clock from the window of another room; it was twenty minutes to five. I met some one in the passage and asked him to go quickly to fetch one of the Institute doctors. Then I begged Elie not to have such ideas, and tried to cheer him. "But, my child, why do you want to calm me? I am quite calm; I am only stating facts," he said, adding tender words. At that moment Salimbeni came in. Elie said to him: "Salimbeni, you are a friend; tell me, is it the end?" And as he protested, he added, "You remember your promise? You will do my post-mortem? and look at the intestines carefully, for I think there is something there now." MM. Roux and Martin then arrived. The feeling of weight in the intestines of which he complained was mentioned. He did not know that he had ascitis in the peritoneum.