However, my uncle was not coming to. When I took off his mask, I saw that his clean-shaven face was as pale as a wax candle. His ungloved hands too looked as if they were of wax. I took them, and being quite ignorant of medicine, I slapped them vigorously, as one does to actresses, for hysterics. This form of applause was in the nature of a _claque_ in the repose of the countryside--sonorous and funereal; it greeted the withdrawal of the great charlatan from the stage. _Frédéric Lerne had indeed ceased to live._ I perceived it from his chilled fingers--from his livid cheeks, his soulless eye, and his heart, which had stopped beating. The cardiac affectation about which I had been so skeptical, had just put an end to his life, as is the way with those diseases, without any warning. Stupefaction, and the reaction from the narrow shave I had just had, kept me motionless. So, in a second, there remained nothing of Lerne except food for worms, and a name fit for oblivion! Nothing! in spite of my hatred for this detestable man, and my relief at knowing that he no longer had power to harm me, I was awestruck by the swift death which had spirited away this monster’s intelligence. Like a puppet deprived of the hand that gave it life, and prostrate on the edge of the stage, Lerne lay stretched out, limp, his arm hanging down, and his funereal Pierrot’s face made whiter by Death. And yet, as the spirit departed from it into the Unknown, the dead body of my uncle seemed to me to grow more beautiful. The soul is so praised in comparison with the flesh, that one is astonished at seeing the latter become beautiful at the departure of the former. I followed the progress of the phenomenon on Lerne’s features. The Great Mystery shed the light of a divine serenity over his brow, as if life were a cloud whose passing reveals some strange sun; and thus whilst the countenance took on the hue of white marble, the puppet became a statue. * * * * * Tears dimmed my eyes. I took off my hat. If my uncle had perished fifteen years before, in the fullness of happiness and wisdom, that Lerne of long ago could not have been more beautiful to see. But I could not go on dreaming in this way, keeping up a conversation with a corpse on a frequented road. So I raised him in my arms calmly, deliberately, and placed him on my left; a strap from the grid fixed him firmly in the seat. With his gloves on his hands again, his cap pulled down over his eyes, his spectacles on his nose, he seemed as if asleep. We set off side by side. Nobody at Grey noted the stiffness of my neighbor, and I was able to take him back to Fonval, with veneration in my heart for the dead man, and full of pity for this old lover who had suffered so much. I forgot the offenses in the presence of the offender’s death. He filled me with a profound respect, I must also say, with an invincible repugnance, which kept me from him in the depths of my seat.