ely.
"Can I speak with him?"
The woman shook her head.
"But I am his son!" persisted Marius.
"He is expecting me."
"He no longer expects you," said the woman.
Then he perceived that she was weeping.
She pointed to the door of a room on the ground-floor; he entered.
In that room, which was lighted by a tallow candle standing on the chimney-piece, there were three men, one standing erect, another kneeling, and one lying at full length, on the floor in his shirt.
The one on the floor was the colonel.
The other two were the doctor, and the priest, who was engaged in prayer.
The colonel had been attacked by brain fever three days previously. As he had a foreboding of evil at the very beginning of his illness, he had written to M. Gillenormand to demand his son.
The malady had grown worse.
On the very evening of Marius'' arrival at Vernon, the colonel had had an attack of delirium; he had risen from his bed, in spite of the servant''s efforts to prevent him, crying:
"My son is not coming!
I shall go to meet him!"
Then he ran out of his room and fell prostrate on the floor of the antechamber.
He had just expired.
The doctor had been summoned, and the cure.
The doctor had arrived too late.
The son had also arrived too late.
By the dim light of the candle, a large tear could be distinguished on the pale and prostrate colonel''s cheek, where it had trickled from his dead eye.