His thoughts carried him back to the beautiful Greek conception of death with its white marble tomb, and the mourners dressed in pure white, carrying garlands of flowers, and chanting some soul-stirring refrain accompanied by maidens playing on the harp and lute. He compared it with a shudder to the gruesome pictures of the Middle Ages, which he remembered to have seen in the frescoes of Orcagna on the walls of the Campo Santo in Pisa, which depicted the dying souls of the damned thrust into the pit of Hell by devils, or the souls of the saved (!) writhing in the flames of Purgatory, and whose torments could alone be alleviated by donations deposited in the money box by their friends on earth. The moon's rays shining through the window shed a soft light through the room, and illuminated the wax-like features of the professor. Once or twice Riche raising himself up in bed thought he saw a faint twitching in Delapine's fingers, but after gazing intently at them he lay down again convinced that he had been deceived. Strange thoughts flitted through his mind. How very different would have been his life during the past week, he said to himself, had Villebois not met him at the café at the corner of the Boulevard S. Michel. What would he be doing now? Perhaps sleeping in his hotel in the Rue de Rivoli, perhaps risking a handful of louis on the green tables of the Casino, but almost certainly not tossing on a bed by the side of a corpse. The room felt uncanny. He had long been familiar with death in all its forms. He had been surgeon in two campaigns in the north of Africa, and had seen his comrades die like flies around him from dysentery and cholera. He had seen their bodies thrown into pits a hundred at a time, but never had he felt such a feeling of awe and terror steal over him as he felt to-night. He could not account for it. Delapine would not needlessly hurt a fly, and now he was lying in the cold hands of death. At length he could stand it no longer, and getting up he dressed himself and paced up and down the room.