"'_I read it in his brain as clearly as if I read it written_... He is lighting a lantern... He has unlocked the grating and entered the charnel-house... He has found my body, and is stooping over it... He has taken my left hand in his left hand, and his knife gleams in the light of the lantern... He is cutting through my wrist... I do not feel the blade in my wrist; I see it... Ah! I begin to feel the knife!... Oh! My wrist! My wrist!... It is nearly severed... Ah! Ah! Ah!... It is severed! "'What is this... The man howls... He is dancing about among the dead... I see! I see... My hand has come away in the left hand of the man who howls, but by a last miracle of the last life in my wrist, _as it was severed_, my hand gripped the hand of the man who howls!... Ha! Ha! he can't get rid of it!... It's gripped him!... How it grips him!... He is dragging at it with his right hand!... He can't stir it!... Ah, it isn't easy to rid oneself of a _dead man's last grip_!... He is out of the charnel-house, howling!... He bounds up the steps, howling!... As he goes, howling, he is waving, like a madman, in the moonlight, _my gripping hand_!' "The voice of Theophrastus died faintly away; and I heard the teeth of M. de la Nox chatter. Then he whispered: "'Where are you now, Cartouche?' "'I am entering the radiant darkness of death!' CHAPTER XVI THE DRAWBACKS OF PSYCHIC SURGERY "As soon as Theophrastus had uttered the words: 'I am entering the radiant darkness of death,' M. Eliphas de Saint-Elme de Taillebourg de la Nox raised his right hand above his head with a splendid gesture, then bent over the face of my friend, breathed upon his eyelids, and said: "'Theophrastus Longuet, awake!' "Theophrastus did not awake. His eyelids remained closed, and his stillness appeared to us stiller than ever. And now that he spoke no more, now that his lips were closed as tightly as his eyelids, it suddenly seemed to us, stricken with a horrible dread, that he had followed Cartouche into the radiant darkness of death. "His corpse-like pallor, his hair grown suddenly white, showed him to us terribly old, old with the age suddenly acquired in the depths of the tomb. [Illustration: "Theophrastus Longuet, awake!"] "M. de la Nox breathed on his eyelids again and again; again and again he moved his arms in splendid gestures; again and again he cried: "'Theophrastus Longuet, awake! Awake! Theophrastus Longuet, awake!' "Theophrastus did not awake; and our hearts sank and sank; then, at the very moment at which we abandoned hope of his ever awaking, he uttered an appalling groan, opened his eyes, and said quietly: "'Good-morning. Cartouche is dead,' "M. de la Nox gasped and said, 'Thank God, the operation has succeeded!'