He was afraid of himself and of that quiet house, down there beside the brook.
"I would love to sleep there under the perfumed herb-roots."
A life wasted!
One beautiful summer afternoon my little son rushed to me with the news that his uncle Lorand was lying on the floor in the middle of the room, and would not rise.
With the worst suspicions, I hastened to his side.
When I entered his room, he was lying, not on the floor, but on the bed.
He lay face downward on the bed.
"What is the matter?" I asked, taking his hand.
"Nothing at all:--only I am dying slowly."
"Great heavens! What have you done?"
"Don"t be alarmed. It was not my hand."
"Then what is the matter?"
"A bee-sting. Laugh at me--I shall die from it."
In the morning he had said that robber bees had attacked his hives, and he was going to destroy them. A strange bee had stung him on the temple.
"But not there ... not there ..." he panted, breathing feverishly: "not into the eighth resting-place--out yonder under the perfumed herb-roots.
There let us lie in the dust one beside the other. Brick up that door.
Good night."
Then he closed his eyes and never opened them again.
Before I could call f.a.n.n.y to his side he was dead.
The valiant hero who had struggled single-handed against whole troops, the man of iron whom neither the sword nor the lance could kill, in ten minutes perished from the p.r.i.c.k of a tiny little insect.
G.o.d moves among us!
When the last moment of temptation had come, when weariness of life was about to arm his hand with the curse of his forefathers, He had sent the very tiniest of his flying minions, and had carried him up on the wings of a bee to the place where the happy ones dwell.
And we are still growing older: who knows how long it will last?
FINIS