effort, if we still may, to repair, as far as we are able, the evil that

we have wrought. If the child survives us, let us come to his aid; if he

is dead, let us seek his forgiveness. Let us cast our crime from us. Let

us ease our consciences of its weight. Let us strive that our souls be

not swallowed up before God, for that is the awful shipwreck. Bodies go

to the fishes, souls to the devils. Have pity on yourselves. Kneel down,

I tell you. Repentance is the bark which never sinks. You have lost your

compass! You are wrong! You still have prayer."

The wolves became lambs--such transformations occur in last agonies;

tigers lick the crucifix; when the dark portal opens ajar, belief is

difficult, unbelief impossible. However imperfect may be the different

sketches of religion essayed by man, even when his belief is shapeless,

even when the outline of the dogma is not in harmony with the lineaments

of the eternity he foresees, there comes in his last hour a trembling of

the soul. There is something which will begin when life is over; this

thought impresses the last pang.

A man's dying agony is the expiration of a term. In that fatal second he

feels weighing on him a diffused responsibility. That which has been

complicates that which is to be. The past returns and enters into the

future. What is known becomes as much an abyss as the unknown. And the

two chasms, the one which is full by his faults, the other of his

anticipations, mingle their reverberations. It is this confusion of the

two gulfs which terrifies the dying man.

They had spent their last grain of hope on the direction of life; hence

204

The Man Who Laughs