Him to release my present extreme anguish, and to direct my footsteps in
the right path, that I may become a better man than I have been." He
paused to recover breath a little; priest was about to go away, he called
him back and proceeded: "I desire to say, besides, in your hearing this:
I declare that I was christened and I have lived, and that so I wish to
die, in the faith which Moses preached in Egypt; which afterwards the
Patriarchs accepted and professed in Judaea; and which, in the course of
time, has been transmitted to France and to us." He seemed desirous of
adding something more, but he ended with a request to his uncle and me to
send up prayers for him; "for those are," he said, "the best duties that
Christians can fulfil one for another." In the course of talking, his
shoulder was uncovered, and although a man-servant stood near him, he
asked his uncle to re-adjust the clothes. Then, turning his eyes towards
me, he said, "Ingenui est, cui multum debeas, ei plurimum velle debere."

M. de Belot called in the afternoon to see him, and M. de la Boetie,
taking his hand, said to him: "I was on the point of discharging my debt,
but my kind creditor has given me a little further time." A little while
after, appearing to wake out of a sort of reverie, he uttered words which
he had employed once or twice before in the course of his sickness:
"Ah well, ah well, whenever the hour comes, I await it with pleasure and
fortitude." And then, as they were holding his mouth open by force to
give him a draught, he observed to M. de Belot: "An vivere tanti est?"

As the evening approached, he began perceptibly to sink; and while I
supped, he sent for me to come, being no more than the shadow of a man,
or, as he put it himself, 'non homo, sed species hominis'; and he said to
me with the utmost difficulty: "My brother, my friend, please God I may
realise the imaginations I have just enjoyed." Afterwards, having waited
for some time while he remained silent, and by painful efforts was