"Tiger--tiger--tiger I am," said he, in a broken voice, gathering himself up in a heap; "yes, tiger. How much blood! In my lair--corpses--torn to pieces! La Goualeuse--the brother of this widow--the child of Louise--here are corpses; my tigress Cecily shall take her share." Then looking at his bony fingers, of which the nails had grown very long during his illness, he added these words: "Oh! my sharp nails: an old tiger I am, but more active, and strong, and bold. No one shall dare dispute my tigress, Cecily. Ah! she calls! she calls!" said he, looking around, and seeming to listen. After a moment's pause, he groped his way along the wall, saying, "No; I thought I heard her; she is not there, but I see her, oh! always, always! Oh! there she is! She calls me--she roars--she roars there! I come, I come."
And Jacques Ferrand dragged himself toward the middle of the chamber on his hands and knees. Although his strength was exhausted, from time to time he advanced by a convulsive spring: then he would pause, seeming to listen attentively.
"Where is she? where is she? I approach, she flies. Ah! there; oh! she awaits me; go; go, Cecily, your old tiger is yours," cried he.
And with a desperate effort he succeeded in getting on his knees. But, suddenly, falling backward with alarm, his body crouched on his heels, his hair standing on end, his look wild, his mouth distorted with terror, his hands stretched out, he seemed to struggle with age against an invisible object, and cried, in a broken voice, "What a bite--help--my arms break--I cannot take it off--sharp teeth. No, no, oh! not the eyes--help--a black serpent--oh! its flat head--its burning eyeballs. It looks at me--it is the devil. Ah! he knows me--Jacques Ferrand--at the church--holy man--always at the church-avaunt!" And the notary, raising himself a little and sustaining himself with one hand on the floor, tried with the other to make the sign of the cross.
His livid face was covered with sweat, and all the symptoms of approaching death were manifested. He fell immediately backward, stiff and inanimate; his eyes seemed to start from their sockets; horrible convulsions stamped his features with unearthly contortions, like those forced from dead bodies by a galvanic battery; a bloody foam inundated his lips, and the life of this monster became extinct in the midst of one of his horrid visions, for he muttered these words: "Night--dark! dark specters--brazen skeletons-- red-hot--twine around me their burning fingers--my flesh smokes--specter-- bloody--no! no--Cecily--fire--Cecily!" Such were the last words of Jacques Ferrand.