danger, and that my father most likely would live for many years to
come. He repeated the same to the patient, who, hearing of the many
years to come, incredulously shook his head and said: "We will see."
As he has always been in the habit of contradicting his doctors, and
proving to them that they know nothing, I did not take his words
seriously. Towards ten at night, when taking his tea, he suddenly rose
and called out:--

"Leon, come here, quick!"

A quarter of an hour later he was in his bed, and within an hour he
was dying.


24 March.

I am convinced that people preserve their idiosyncracies and
originality to the last minute of their life. Thus my father, in the
solemn dignity of thoughts at the approaching end, still showed a
gratified vanity that he, and not the doctor, had been right, and that
his unbelief in medicine was well founded. I listened to what he said,
and besides, read his thoughts in his face. He was deeply impressed
with the importance of the moment; there was also curiosity as to the
future life,--not a shadow of doubt as to its existence, but rather a
certain uneasiness about how he would be received, joined to an almost
unconscious, unsophisticated belief that he would not be treated as a
mere nobody in particular. I shall never die like this, because I have
no basis to uphold me in the hour of death. My father parted with his
life in absolute faith and the deep contrition of a true Christian. At
the moment when he received the last sacraments he was so venerable,