So the
outer world seemed to be in a plot to steep this man about to die in a
painful trance. A prey to the maleficent power which acts relaxingly
upon us by the fluid circulating through our nerves, his whole frame
seemed gradually to experience a dissolving process. He felt the
anguish of these throes passing through him in waves, and the houses
and the crowd seemed to surge to and fro in a mist before his eyes. He
tried to escape the agitation wrought in his mind by the revulsions of
his physical nature, and went toward the shop of a dealer in
antiquities, thinking to give a treat to his senses, and to spend the
interval till nightfall in bargaining over curiosities.
He sought, one might say, to regain courage and to find a stimulant,
like a criminal who doubts his power to reach the scaffold. The
consciousness of approaching death gave him, for the time being, the
intrepidity of a duchess with a couple of lovers, so that he entered
the place with an abstracted look, while his lips displayed a set
smile like a drunkard's. Had not life, or rather had not death,
intoxicated him? Dizziness soon overcame him again. Things appeared to
him in strange colors, or as making slight movements; his irregular
pulse was no doubt the cause; the blood that sometimes rushed like a
burning torrent through his veins, and sometimes lay torpid and
stagnant as tepid water.
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