I held my tongue, and thought over those words. Oh, ethics! Oh, logic!
Oh, wisdom! At his age! So they deprived him of his only remaining
pleasure out of regard for his health! His health! What would he do
with it, inert and trembling wreck that he was? They were taking care
of his life, so they said. His life? How many days? Ten, twenty,
fifty, or a hundred? Why? For his own sake? Or to preserve for some
time longer the spectacle of his impotent greediness in the family.
But all at once one envelope made me start. My name was traced on it in
a large, bold handwriting; and suddenly tears came to my eyes. That
letter was from my dearest friend, the companion of my youth, the
confidant of my hopes; and he appeared before me so clearly, with his
pleasant smile and his hand outstretched, that a cold shiver ran down my
back. Yes, yes, the dead come back, for I saw him! Our memory is a
more perfect world than the universe: it gives back life to those who no
longer exist.
But she shook with rage, and got up one of those conjugal scenes which
make a peaceable man dread the domestic hearth more than a battlefield
where bullets are raining.