In a renewed rage, which increased with every step I took, I turned back to seek him. Suddenly I came upon him lying dead by the roadside. Never shall I forget that shock—the reproach, the appeal of that poor lifeless animal! I stroked him, I kissed him, I whispered his name in his ear, but it was all in vain. I lifted up his beautiful broad paw which he was wont to lay on my knee, I held it between my hands, and when I let it go it fell heavily to the ground. I could not carry him home, and with bitter tears and a kind of dread I drew him aside a little way up the hill behind a rock. I went to my lodgings, returned towards dusk with a spade, dug his grave in a lonely spot near the bottom of a waterfall where he would never be disturbed, and there I buried him, reverently smoothing the turf over him. What a night that was for me! I was haunted incessantly by the vivid image of the dead body and by the terror which accompanies a great crime. I had repaid all his devotion with horrible cruelty. I had repented, but he would never know it. It was not the dog only which I had slain; I had slain Divine faithfulness and love. That _God damn you_ sounded perpetually in my ears. The Almighty had registered and executed the curse, but it had fallen upon the murderer and not on the victim. When I rose in the morning I distinctly felt the blow of the kick in my foot, and the sensation lasted all day. For weeks I was in a miserable condition. A separate consciousness seemed to establish itself in this foot; there was nothing to be seen and no pain, but there was a dull sort of pressure of which I could not rid myself. If I slept I dreamed of the dog, and generally dreamed I was caressing him, waking up to the dreadful truth of the corpse on the path in the rain. I got it into my head—for I was half-crazy—that only by some expiation I should be restored to health and peace; but how to make any expiation I could not tell. Unhappy is the wretch who longs to atone for a sin and no atonement is prescribed to him!