have had to come up quickly, but he struck out so roughly with his leg that I received a blow upon the chest, throwing me again to the bottom, where the depth is considerable at that point! “Desfontaines subsequently told me all that had happened in their walk and the subjects discussed between them. I was anxious to learn whether he was saved, whether he was damned, whether he was in purgatory, whether I was myself in a state of grace and whether I should follow him speedily; but he continued speaking as if he had not heard, or refused to listen. I tried to embrace him several times, but I seemed to embrace nothing; yet I felt him still holding me tight by the arm, and when I attempted to turn away my head, so as not to see him because of the grief which it caused me, he tightened his grasp as if to compel me to look as well as to listen. He seemed taller than when I had last seen him and taller even than he was at the time of death, though he had grown a good deal during the eighteen months since we met. I saw him as far as his waist only and he was naked, his head bare and a white paper twisted in his beautiful fair hair over the forehead; the paper had writing on it, but I could read only the word: IN, &c. His voice was the same voice; he seemed neither gay nor sad, but in a calm and tranquil state. He begged me on his brother’s return to give him certain messages for his father and mother; he begged me also to say the seven penitential psalms, which had been imposed on him as a penance the previous Sunday and which he had not yet recited. Finally, he again advised me to speak to his brother and then bade me farewell, saying as he went: ‘Till I see you again,’ which was our usual formula when we parted at the end of a walk. He told me also that at the time he was drowned his brother, who was making a translation, regretted having let him go apart from him, in case of an accident. He described so well where he was drowned and the tree in the Avenue de Louvigny on which he had cut some words that two years afterwards, when in the company of the late Chevalier de Gotot, one who was with him at the time, I pointed out the very spot and counting the trees on one side, as Desfontaines had specified, I went straight to the tree, there to find the inscription. I learned also that it was true about the seven psalms which had been given him as a penance at confession. His brother also told me that he was writing his translation and reproached himself for not being with him.