All its brother and sister spirits had fled, since the beginnings of time, from their bodies at the crisis of dissolution, had gone to punishment or to reward.

His soul alone was to meet a different fate, was to be confined in a decaying body, to breathe physical corruption, and to be at home in a crumbling dwelling to which no light, no air, could ever penetrate.

And the soul, which knows instinctively its eternal _mtier_, rebelled with a fantastic violence.

And still, ever, the body died.

The pulses ceased from beating.