In August 1893 he says he has been recasting the beginning.

A year later, still only the first four or five chapters had been drafted.
Then, in the last weeks of his life, he attacked the task again, in a sudden heat of inspiration, and worked at it ardently and without interruption until the end came.

No wonder if during these weeks he was sometimes aware of a tension of the spirit difficult to sustain.

"How can I keep this pitch ?" he is reported to have said after finishing one of the chapters; and all the world knows how that frail organism in fact betrayed him in mid effort.

The greatness of the loss to his country's letters can for the first time be fully measured from the foregoing pages.
There remains one more point to be mentioned, as to the speech and manners of the Hanging Judge himself.