"I left the village and began walking about the fields. At the end of some time I turned back and saw a great crowd coming after me. I recognized all the men whom I had seen in the town, and they had strange heads. They did not appear to be in a hurry, and yet they walked faster than I, and made no noise in walking. In an instant this crowd joined me and surrounded me. The faces of these men were earth-colored. Then the man I had seen first and questioned when I entered the town said to me, "Where are you going? do you not know that you have been dead for a long time?" I opened my mouth to answer, and I perceived that there was no one near me."
He woke up, chilled to the marrow, for a wind, cold as the morning breeze, was shaking the open window. The fire had died away, the candle was nearly burned out, and it was still black night. He rose and went to the window; there were still no stars in the sky. From his window he could see the yard and his street, and a dry sharp sound on the ground below him induced him to look out. He saw two red stars whose rays lengthened and shortened curiously in the gloom. As his mind was half submerged in the mist of dreams, he thought, "There are no stars in the sky: they are on the earth now." A second sound like the first completely woke him, and he perceived that those two stars were carriage lamps, and by the light which they projected he could distinguish the shape of the vehicle; it was a tilbury, in which a small white horse was harnessed. The sound he had heard was the pawing of the horse's hoof on the ground.
"What's the meaning of this conveyance?" he said to himself. "Who can have come at so early an hour?"
At this moment there was a gentle tap at his bed-room door; he shuddered from head to foot, and shouted in a terrible voice, "Who's there?"
Some one replied, "I, sir," and he recognized his old servant's voice.
"It is getting on for four o'clock, sir."
"The ostler says that he has come to fetch M. le Maire."
This name made him start as if a flash of lightning had passed before his eyes.
"Ah, yes," he repeated, "M. Scaufflaire."
Could the old woman have seen him at this moment, she would have been horrified. There was a lengthened silence, during which he stupidly examined the candle flame and rolled up some of the wax in his fingers. The old woman, who was waiting, at length mustered up courage to raise her voice again.