"Beware what you say; you have
received extreme unction, and I should be inconsolable if you
were to die before my eyes in mortal sin."
"Will you listen to me?" cried Bartolommeo, and his mouth
twitched.
Don Juan held his peace; an ugly silence prevailed. Yet above the
muffled sound of the beating of the snow against the windows rose
the sounds of the beautiful voice and the viol in unison, far off
and faint as the dawn. The dying man smiled.
"Thank you," he said, "for bringing those singing voices and the
music, a banquet, young and lovely women with fair faces and dark
tresses, all the pleasure of life! Bid them wait for me; for I am
about to begin life anew."
"The delirium is at its height," said Don Juan to himself.
"I have found out a way of coming to life again," the speaker
went on. "There, just look in that table drawer, press the spring
hidden by the griffin, and it will fly open."
"I have found it, father."
"Well, then, now take out a little phial of rock crystal."
"I have it."
"I have spent twenty years in----" but even as he spoke the old
man felt how very near the end had come, and summoned all his
dying strength to say, "As soon as the breath is out of me, rub
me all over with that liquid, and I shall come to life again."
"There is very little of it," his son remarked.
Though Bartolommeo could no longer speak, he could still hear and
see.
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