_Born_ April 27, 1878
_Died_ December 21, 1908.
December 21, 1908 ... or January 22, 1909.... January 22, 1909--that’s
today! Just a month ... no, not quite a month ... a month less one
day.... I have been here on this tomb, on my tomb, waiting for death,
my second death....
A month.... One month.... And all the while my eyes have been gazing
down under this flagstone ... my eyes? those other eyes, I mean ...
which see ... which insist on seeing ... implacably ... gazing down
under this flagstone upon a coffin ... my coffin.... The coffin is
quite new and undecayed.... But it holds only a skeleton ... a naked
skeleton, without clothing ... its clothes ... my clothes, were far too
thin ... they fell to dust immediately. Nothing except the bones are
left; and they too are all but vanishing. On them, however, I can see
something ... the letter of the colonel of artillery ... they buried
it by mistake with the corpse ... it is still quite legible....
Yes, a skeleton ... a skeleton about to fall away to dust ... nothing
but a skeleton.... How can I continue living if I am nothing, after
all, but that skeleton plus this ruin of wasted flesh and bone that
has collapsed on this grave here? Impossible, assuredly! Impossible,
fortunately....
A month.... one month! The earth came up around the edges of this
flagstone ... so heavy that it sank into the loosened ground.... Some
workmen came and levelled the mound again, tamping the earth down under
the stone ... so heavy the stone ... and heavy the earth under it....
Oh, my tired body cannot support such burdens longer....
* * * * * * * * *
Tomorrow when they come to bury me they will put me in another
grave.... And I shall have that other earth and another stone to bear!
No man surely was ever tormented thus!
* * * * * * * * *
The sun is sinking again.... In the west the sky is reddening ... as
red as it was the day of my funeral....
The weather is clear.... Not a single cloud disturbs the even azure
of the firmament.... The winter wind has fallen and the branches of
the cypress trees have ceased their murmuring.... A gleam of blood-red
light is striking on their black tips.... Over all the heavens and over
all the earth a great and sombre beauty glows.... Splendor and Serenity
... reaching even into my soul....
Farewell....